[CPEO-MEF] Community Perspectives on Munitions Response

[Lenny Siegel <lennysiegel@gmail.com>]

[To download the full 5-page report as a 1.4 MB PDF file, go to 
http://www.cpeo.org/pubs/CommunityMunitionsResponse.pdf]

Community Perspectives on Munitions Response at Department of Defense 
Installations

Lenny Siegel
Center for Public Environmental Oversight
September, 2007

Protecting the public from encounters with unexploded ordnance and other 
munitions hazards in the more than 10 million acres of former military 
land ranges in the United States is one of the most technically 
challenging and potentially expensive federal environmental programs. In 
2003, the second Defense Science Board Task Force on Unexploded 
Ordnance, concluded:

Estimated cleanup costs are uncertain but are clearly tens of billions 
of dollars. This cost is driven by the digging of holes in which no UXOs 
are present. The instruments used to detect UXOs (generally located 
underground) produce many false alarms-i.e., detections from scrap metal 
or other foreign or natural objects -for every detection of a real 
unexploded munition found. Because each of these false alarms could 
potentially be a UXO, a careful excavation is required, leading to very 
high costs. The Task Force believes that modern technology can 
substantially reduce such false alarms leading to a dramatic reduction 
in overall cleanup cost.

The Defense Department is in fact sponsoring a number of research and 
development projects designed to do exactly that, and the results are 
promising. Furthermore, Army Corps of Engineers projects teams are 
already applying a "pick list" strategy to ordnance sites, using 
existing geophysical technologies and equipment to decide which 
"anomalies" to excavate. (Anomalies are signals picked up by survey 
equipment, indicating the presence of metallic objects.) For these 
approaches to succeed, however, they must earn the confidence of 
regulatory agencies and affected communities, including the owners of 
former military property.

Consequently, the Center for Public Environmental Oversight evaluated 
public stakeholders' views of existing and emerging munitions response 
technologies. In particular, CPEO sought to find out how impacted 
communities view munitions response strategies in which project teams 
selectively excavate geophysical anomalies recorded during site surveys.

To answer this question, I visited munitions response sites at Amaknak 
(Dutch Harbor), Alaska; the former Lowry Bombing and Gunnery Range, 
Colorado; Camp Edwards, Massachusetts; and the Former Mojave Gunnery 
Range Complex, California. In addition, I drew upon earlier visits to 
numerous other military ranges as well as correspondence with 
stakeholders from other munitions response properties. I interviewed 
landowners, members of Restoration Advisory Boards, and other public 
stakeholders.

...

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Lenny Siegel
Director, Center for Public Environmental Oversight
c/o PSC, 278-A Hope St., Mountain View, CA 94041
Voice: 650/961-8918 or 650/969-1545
Fax: 650/961-8918
<lsiegel@cpeo.org>
http://www.cpeo.org


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