Tuesday Town Hall Meeting Targeted to St. Elizabeths Community (10/15/07)

Washington, DC-- Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC), with Mayor Adrian Fenty, and officials of the General Services Administration will hold a Ward 8 Town Hall Meeting on the "Environmental Findings at St. Elizabeths West Campus: What it Means for You and Your Family," particularly targeted to the immediate neighborhood, at 6 PM on Tuesday, October 16, 2007, at the Boys and Girls Clubs #11 (620 Milwaukee Place, SE).The headquarters of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is expected to be located on the west campus. Last month GSA completed a draft master plan and draft environmental impact study (EIS) of the property slated for the federal construction. However, a major focus of the town meeting will be recent testing that revealed traces of chemical contaminants. Norton, who has oversight over the development as chair of the Economic Development, Public Buildings, and Emergency Management Subcommittee, also is planning an official hearing on the development shortly. GSA's statutorily-required EIS hearing for public comments will be held on Thursday, October 18, at 6 PM at Matthews Memorial Baptist Church (2616 Martin Luther King, Jr. Avenue).

The environmental study that occasions tomorrow's meeting showed traces of the same chemical contaminants in the soil and ground water on the St. Elizabeths west campus that had been found years ago on the east campus, apparently resulting from the municipal disposal of incinerator or power plant ash in the 1950s and 1960s. Health risks to the community are considered unlikely, but further tests are being conducted in nearby neighborhoods to ascertain whether or not any areas outside of the site have been affected, including some homes that are not far from the brick walls that surround the campus. Although a similar problem was detected on the east campus, no action proved necessary, and the District has since built the Unified Communications Center and the D.C. Department of Mental Health there. At a community meeting that Norton attended on September 28, nearby residents, particularly children, were urged to continue to stay away from the west campus, which has been abandoned for decades.

Norton has struggled for three years to have the DHS headquarters bill voted out of House and Senate committees, and with a new majority in Congress, she is now close to success. The appropriation to build the headquarters has passed the House, as well as the Senate Appropriations Committee, and is expected to clear the Senate shortly. Norton said that congressional pressure for a DHS headquarters has mounted considerably because of the difficulty of running the agency out of more than 50 locations. Norton also has pressed for the appropriation as a member of the Homeland Security Committee, where the consolidation is considered essential to bringing together major parts of an agency charged with a vital security mission. "The agency's national importance and urgency is matched by the historic and practical significance to Ward 8 of bringing a major federal agency east of the Anacostia for the first time," Norton said. The DHS headquarters is expected to house up to 14,000 federal employees and attract significant economic development and amenities to the area.