The battle of Fort Monroe is inevitable, some say
Cleaning up buried munitions at the Hampton Army post will take years, cost
a ton of money and likely result in many arguments.
Daily Press
By John M. R. Bull
June 5, 2007
HAMPTON -- The Army will leave a big problem behind when it abandons Fort
Monroe on the banks of the Chesapeake Bay in four years: 23,000 suspected
pieces of unexploded munitions buried all over the post and about 80,000
mines, mortar rounds and still-live cannonballs in the moat.
And that's not to mention an unknown number of unexploded artillery shells
likely to be sloshing around offshore, a danger to future beachgoers after
the post is turned over for civilian use.
State and local officials are talking now about having those shells removed
somehow.
And the Army is already contending there's no proof that they came from the
fort's artillery batteries, which were active from the 1870s until the
1950s -- so their removal isn't necessarily the Army's responsibility.
"There are going to be battles about this," said Tim Ford, executive
director of the National Association of Installation Developers, which works
with communities to develop former military bases. "There are always
battles."
In the not-so-distant past, there weren't any fights.
Until the 1980s, the military shed unwanted bases and training ranges as it
wished -- often ditching them on unsuspecting local or state governments or
turning them over to the National Park Service for use as national parks or
wildlife refuges.
The bombs, rockets and shells would slowly rust until an explosive --
unearthed by nature's endless cycle of frost and thaws -- turned up in a
housing development or a playground years later or hikers stumbled over old
munitions. Then an emergency cleanup would begin.
These days, Congress requires the military to clean up pollution and
munitions problems when it discards bases or ranges. The idea is to prevent
dangers from cropping up in the future.
Inevitably, what's an acceptable level of cleanup becomes an issue between
the military and civilian officials. Inevitably, money drives those
arguments. Buried munitions are "always the most difficult thing in
negotiations," said Jim Reifsnyder, assistant director of the federal
Government Accountability Office.
The GAO, the investigative arm of Congress, released a report in January
that concluded the transfer of closed military bases to civilian hands was
being delayed for years or even decades -- often because of
munitions-cleanup disputes and discoveries of additional buried explosives
after the work began.
A LESSON FROM CALIF.?
California officials wrangled with the Army for a decade over how
extensively to clean up unexploded munitions on 3,300 acres at Fort Ord,
said Michael Houlemard, director of the Fort Ord Reuse Authority.
The Army wasn't shirking its responsibility, he said. But, he said, the
disputes were technical, detailed and extensive -- and complicated by the
military's byzantine system of hiring and paying contractors, who do the
actual cleanup work.
Eventually, the decision was made this spring to privatize the cleanup,
instead of waiting any longer. The Army agreed to pay $40 million of the
project's estimated $95 million cost. Getting the property on the tax rolls
partly justified eating part of the cleanup cost, Houlemard said.
That's a lesson Fort Monroe reuse planners should take to heart, he said.
"It was a difficult decision to make," Houlemard said. "The planning, the
finances, the cleanup -- all of them are going to take longer than anyone is
going to tell you. There's a hefty amount of back-and-forth to meander
through the maze the military has to go through with contracting issues."
A 1995 survey of Fort Monroe revealed that hundreds of pieces of unexploded
munitions had been scattered throughout the post since the 1960s and that
some had washed up on its Dog Beach.
The post used several artillery and mortar batteries over the span of a
century, and for a time, it was the main coastal-artillery training base in
the country. Mostly, shells were fired out into the bay. For a time,
however, mortars were fired from the southern end of the post onto the
northern end.
An Army Corps of Engineers analysis of a magnetometer survey of the post
identified 23,000 metallic buried anomalies there. Those were deemed either
"probable" or "highly likely" to be unexploded ordnance, it said, and 80,000
pieces are likely to be found in the post's moat.
About 1,300 metallic anomalies were found under the post's parade ground
alone. The magnetometer survey didn't look at the ball fields or the RV
campground near what used to be the mortar impact range.
"It is highly likely" that unexploded artillery shells remain in the water
off the post, a November 2006 Corps of Engineers report said. The Army's
estimated costs to clean up ordnance problems at the post have fluctuated
wildly over the past two decades. At one point, Army officials put the price
tag at $6 million. A 1980 analysis suggested that $636 million would be the
worst-case scenario. That would be $1.02 billion today.
Before the 2005 decision to close the post, the Army twice argued
successfully to keep the post open because closing it would require a
cost-prohibitive cleanup. The Army now figures the cost to remove buried
ordnance to be between $73 million and $201 million.
And that doesn't include any offshore artillery-shell removal that might be
negotiated. Removing underwater explosives is even more expensive than
getting rid of land-based ordnance.
"It's been discussed," said Curt Shaffer, a special assistant to Hampton's
city manager on the future of Fort Monroe. "We're still early in the
process. We don't want to end up, as has happened at other bases, with this
drawing out over years."
Fort Monroe's cleanup cost is built on the assumption that much of the
post's 570 acres would remain open space; that homes would be built and a
public beach opened; and that tourists would be drawn to the historic
moat-surrounded cantonment, a nature center and outdoor amphitheater. Reuse
plans are being formulated.
HOW CLEAN IS ENOUGH?
Here's a little-known trade secret about digging up unexploded munitions:
It's only a bit more sophisticated than using a metal detector and a shovel.
But it's dangerous and requires trained experts.
The most thorough, time-consuming and costly of removal efforts -- which the
military rarely agrees to finance because it requires digging up and sifting
every cubic inch of soil to a depth of 10 feet -- uncovers only 99 percent
of buried munitions.
That method increases the cost tenfold, according to a 2005 study on
unexploded-ordnance cleanup costs by the respected Rand Corp.
This explains why the military prefers to dig up whatever munitions are
found a foot or two below the surface, then leave with instructions for the
locals to call the nearest military bomb squad when an explosive is
uncovered later, said the report's author, Jacqueline MacDonald, an
environmental engineer in Pittsburgh.
Naturally, local and state environmental and safety officials demand a more
thorough cleanup -- so disputes are the norm, not the exception.
"No environmental regulator wants to sign off and have something blow up in
the future," MacDonald said.
Because such cleanups routinely miss explosives, she said, Fort Monroe reuse
planners must accept that something dangerous will be uncovered in the
future and must decide now how to warn citizens who will eventually buy Fort
Monroe property.
That should be done through permanent public warning signs or through
caveats in property deeds -- or both, MacDonald suggested.
And after the cleanup, building construction crews will have to be alerted
to the potential of buried explosives and trained to deal with them, she
said.
If the military isn't forced to clean the post to a depth of 10 feet in
parts where home foundations will be built, a ban on swimming pool
construction should be incorporated into all property deeds, MacDonald said.
Building a pool is a common way to uncover buried munitions long after
explosives-aware home-construction crews are done with their work.
"The wise thing to do is to make a quantitative risk assessment and let
people know what the risks will be after cleanup," MacDonald said. "There
will be risk."
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