Norton to Speak on House Floor to Ensure No Threat to Spring Valley Cleanup

Norton to Speak on House Floor to Ensure No Threat to Spring Valley Cleanup

May 25, 2011

WASHINGTON, DC - Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) will seek time on the House floor today to speak against an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012, that would cut $197 million for Formerly Used Defense Sites (FUDS) and reallocate those funds to the disposal of nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain in Nevada. The amendment, offered by Representative Joe Wilson (R-SC), could affect the cleanup of munitions and toxins found at thousands of FUDS around the nation, including the site in Northwest D.C.'s Spring Valley neighborhood.

Norton, who has worked for years to ensure that munitions at Spring Valley are found and properly destroyed, said that she will oppose the amendment even though the defense bill is an authorization, not an appropriations, bill and even though Spring Valley is the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers number one site for clean up.

"Considering that the amendment cuts 60 percent of the program's funding, not to mention what the House Republican majority has already done to the District, I cannot and will not take any chances," said Norton. "Many FUDS are located far away from densely populated areas. The D.C. site is in one of the city's residential neighborhoods and almost certainly would not have been selected as a primary site for testing World War I munitions if the District had the right to govern itself and equal representation in the Congress. Now that we know what we discovered only accidentally decades later, we will not allow any uncertainty or delay in the quick destruction of the munitions."

In January, Norton visited the Army Corps site in upper Northwest D.C., where the Corps this year began destroying approximately 100 conventional munitions recovered in Spring Valley. Since 1993, the Corps has been clearing areas in the Northwest neighborhood where World War I munitions were buried by the Army. The Congresswoman has held a series of community meetings and congressional hearings to monitor progress and to ensure completion of the cleanup, and has toured Spring Valley sites several times since munitions were discovered. In 2009, she got the Corps, for the first time, to release the full list of munitions and toxins found at the site during the last 18 years. The findings included three chemicals -- 75 mm arsine projectiles, a 75 mm mustard gas projectile, and a 75 mm lewisite projectile -- among other projectiles and shrapnel.