Norton to Hold Press Conference After Site Visit in Spring Valley (8/18/09)
Norton to Hold Press Conference After Site Visit in Spring Valley
Wednesday, Aug. 19
WASHINGTON, D.C. - Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC), on Wednesday, August 19, will begin her site visit of the Spring Valley neighborhood, where small amounts of the agent mustard were found, at 10 a.m. at a mobile facility near 5201 Little Falls Road, N.W.. Ward 3 Councilwoman Mary Cheh (D) will also attend. Norton will be briefed by U. S. Army Corps of Engineers representatives for about 15 minutes before proceeding to inspect the area under investigation. She will drive past Dalecarlia Woods, where an investigation is underway for future work, then to 3806 49th Street, where the Corps is conducting an arsenic clean-up project, and then to 4825 Glenbrook, N.W., where the mustard agent was found. At the end of the visit, the Congresswoman and representatives will hold a press conference at the 4825 Glenbrook Road property, owned by American University, where trace amounts of mustard in a flask were found earlier this month during excavation work.
Last week, Norton was briefed by U.S. Army corps Commander Colonel David Anderson and was shown a photograph of the mustard agent found at the bottom of a flask in "trace amounts," but wanted to visit the site herself in advance of her Spring Valley town hall meeting next month. The flask was analyzed at a laboratory in Edgewood, MD, and, Norton was told, found not to pose a risk to public health.
For 16 years the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has been cleaning areas in Spring Valley, where World War I toxic munitions were buried by the Army and accidentally uncovered by residents decades later.