Army fights state order to clean up McClellan

The Army is contesting a state order to spend more time cleaning up unexploded ordnance at Fort McClellan, where state inspectors say workers for a contractor hid munitions they should have destroyed.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and its contractor, Tetra Tech FW Inc., filed an appeal asking the Alabama Department of Environmental Management to reconsider its order to go back over 1,000 acres that were previously listed by Tetra Tech as cleared.

"It could take a year or more, depending how it's handled," said Dan Coberly, a spokesman for the corps. "It's a lot of work, and it's a lot of money."

The Corps of Engineers is responsible for cleaning up former artillery ranges at Fort McClellan, which closed in 1999 and will be used for a variety of purposes in the future.

In July, state regulators said they found 24 rounds of munitions that Tetra Tech workers were supposed to have destroyed. Instead, they had been hidden behind trees or covered with leaves and soil.

The area has been turned over to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service as a longleaf pine preserve and is expected to someday be opened to the public.

Coberly said the public doesn't fully understand the July incident.

The munitions were only flares used in firing practice, he said, designed to release smoke but not explode. Nineteen of the 24 shells were fully spent, he said.

But under military definitions, any remaining scraps of the metal from weapons that should have been destroyed during exercises are classified as "unexploded ordnance," Coberly said.

Alabama's environmental agency issued an order that Tetra Tech stop all work at the base until the Alabama Department of Environmental Management completes an investigation. The state also ordered the company to backtrack and review past work.

"Certainly when this area is open we don't want these things lying around," said Stephen Cobb, chief of governmental hazardous waste for ADEM.

ADEM has not finished its investigation of the incident, although it has charged the company with violating hazardous waste law. At the end of July, the department issued an order that also required Tetra Tech or the Army to check all previously cleared areas.

"The Army and its contractor, however, are refusing to investigate any area unless the state of Alabama has specific proof of mishandled ordnance," according to a letter ADEM Director Jim Warr wrote to U.S. Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala.

Shelby backs state:

Shelby is backing Warr and ADEM. In late August, he wrote the acting secretary of the Army, Les Brownlee, saying he had lost faith in Tetra Tech. Allegations that Tetra Tech deliberately hid the munitions instead of disposing of them properly, Shelby wrote, are eroding the public's confidence in the cleanup.

In his letter to Shelby, Warr wrote that "I regret to inform you that the Army and its contractor appear prepared to litigate as opposed to cooperating with the department to address hazards to which the citizens of Alabama may be exposed."

Efforts to reach a lawyer for Tetra Tech failed on Wednesday.

In a letter to ADEM requesting an appeal, Tetra Tech President Sam Box wrote that his company "takes this step very reluctantly. We are in the business of providing quality services to our clients and not litigating."

His lawyers wrote, however, that ADEM overstepped its authority with a "overly broad, vague and ambiguous" order that is in places arbitrary.

An attorney for the Army said that attorneys filed the appeal before a 30-day deadline only to be sure they kept all their options open.

"We are eagerly and actively working to have discussions with the department to reach something that we all will find to be reasonable," said Army lawyer Michael Bobrick.

If neither side backs down, the matter will go before an administrative law judge appointed by the state attorney general's office.