Norton to Tour Destruction System in Spring Valley in Advance of Plans to Destroy Weapons

Norton to Tour Destruction System in Spring Valley in Advance of Plans to Destroy Conventional Weapons

January 5, 2011

WASHINGTON, DC - Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) tomorrow, January 6, at 10:30 a.m., will tour the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (Corps) site where conventional munitions, recovered during the Corps Spring Valley cleanup, but pose little likelihood of harm to the public, will be destroyed. Norton will see firsthand the equipment and stages the munitions will go through as they are destroyed. During the tour, which will begin at 5201 Little Falls Road, NW (behind Sibley Hospital, off MacArthur Boulevard), Norton will be briefed on the safety precautions that will be taken the Corps, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and the District Department of the Environment.

The briefing and tour are part of the Congresswoman's ongoing efforts to cleanup the Spring Valley Formerly Used Defense Site. 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 toured Spring Valley sites several times since munitions were discovered there in 1993, and has held a series of community meetings and congressional hearings to monitor progress and to ensure completion of the cleanup. In 2009, she got the Corps to release, for the first time, the full list of munitions and toxins found at the site over 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.