Norton Hosts Spring Valley Town Hall Meeting on September 29th (9/4/09)

Norton Hosts Spring Valley Town Hall Meeting Sept. 29 to Hear From Officials and Residents on Munitions Clean-Up

September 4, 2009

WASHINGTON, D.C. - The Office of Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) today announced that the Congresswoman's promised Spring Valley Town Hall Meetingwill be heldTuesday, Sept. 29, 6:30-8:30 p.m., at a location to be determined. The neighborhood town hall meeting will offer Spring Valley residents a forum to question top officials of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, following discovery of small trace amounts of toxic mustard there last month by Corps workers, responsible for clean-up of the World War I testing site. Norton visited several sites of concern in the Spring Valley community and questioned Corps officials about the recent discovery. Expected at the meeting with the Congresswoman are: are Addison Davis, Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Army Environment, Safety and Occupational Health; Col. David Anderson, Commander and District Engineer, Baltimore District, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers; William C. Early, Acting Regional Administrator, US EPA; and George Hawkins, Director, D.C. Department of the Environment.

The Congresswoman earlier this summer held another hearing on the decades-long clean-up of the site. She said her meeting with residents this month will ensure transparency and improve relations between the community and the Corps, which will continue its work there for years to come. Norton said, "The official House hearing was imperative to ensure that the Corps will not leave until the work is done. Even then, the Spring Valley site will need perpetual monitoring, considering the decades that passed before the first discovery of buried munitions. The discovery of traces of mustard during Corps digging re-enforces the need for the commitment we got from the Corps at the hearing to make greater transparency mandatory."