Baltimore Sun
July 14, 2003

Further cleanup to start at APG
Toxic Gas Yard became radioactive collection spot; 3 public meetings scheduled; Officials to give updates on decontamination plans

By Lane Harvey Brown
Sun Staff
Originally published July 14, 2003

Even as the Army destroys more than 1,600 tons of mustard agent stockpiled at Aberdeen Proving Ground, it is poised to begin another multimillion-dollar cleanup, on land contaminated by radioactive medical and research waste.

The site, near the banks of the Bush River on the Edgewood peninsula, was the East Coast collection point for Army radioactive medical and research waste in the 1950s and 1960s, say APG officials. Before that, it was home to the Toxic Gas Yard, until canisters of mustard agent and other dangerous chemical weapons were moved to a larger storage site on the peninsula early in World War II.

The Army is spending millions every year to clean up the toxic legacy of APG, a premier research and testing site for the military. In Edgewood, where the mission centered on chemical weapons, the peninsula is home to a list of EPA priority cleanup sites that include a 1,621-ton mustard agent stockpile, dumps of old chemical weapons, lab leftovers and radiological waste.

APG officials will meet three times with the community this week to update residents on two projects that have raised deep concerns in the past: the radiological waste yard and the mustard agent stockpile.

The installation is in the midst of destroying its stockpile of mustard agent, a banned carcinogenic blistering agent, but its plant has been beset by a spate of minor problems since it began neutralizing the agent in April.

Restoration workers at the proving ground's former radioactive waste processing facility, called RAD Yard by APG officials, are set to begin the first phase of a long-term cleanup that will take years to complete and cost millions more.

The yard collected waste from Army sites along the East Coast and prepared it for deep-sea dumping, which was one of the designated disposal methods during the '50s and '60s, said Don Green, an environmental scientist at APG. Edgewood's water access made it a convenient pass-through for the waste, he said.

The waste was boiled down into a radioactive sludge, which was then mixed with concrete in 55-gallon drums, he said.

The first phase of the cleanup, Green said, will cost $1.9 million to remove about 11,000 cubic yards of soil on the 3.1-acre site, which is contaminated by cesium-137 and arsenic. Wastewater remaining in some of the processing buildings also contains cesium-137, a radioactive isotope, he said, adding that some traces of cobalt-60, an isotope often used in X-rays, have also been found there.

Workers will test for and remove unexploded ordnance down to 2 feet, Green said. Then the contaminated soil will be removed, tested and sorted; dirt contaminated with radioactive waste will be shipped to Envirocare, a low-level radioactive waste handler in Utah, he said, and arsenic-contaminated dirt will be taken to a hazardous waste disposal site.

But the soil removal is just the first step in cleaning up deeper, more onerous contamination between the soil and ground water, and in the ground water, Green said. A study outlining options to clean under the RAD Yard and its neighbor, the 22nd Street Landfill -- Edgewood's largest at 8.3 acres -- is to be finished later this year.

The cost of cleaning up the landfill area is expected to be about $6.9 million, while the RAD Yard could cost about $6.6 million, Green said.

Nearby, workers are destroying the stockpile of mustard agent by mixing the mustard in a large tank with hot water to break it down into treatable, less dangerous byproducts.

After the Sept. 11 attacks, Army officials moved to speed up the timetable for destruction by a year or more by retooling the approved robotic plant that was being built on the Edgewood peninsula. The result has been a smaller, streamlined plant that uses workers instead of a fully automated assembly line to process the 1-ton containers of the agent.

Workers reach inside separately vented gloveboxes to empty and drain the containers, which are then closed again and set aside for future clean-out and shipment to Rock Island, Ill., where they will be destroyed.

The retooling has led to problems in the past couple of months, including a power outage and low-level releases of vapor inside the neutralization area, in an airlock and at a drain station. Work was stopped briefly last month after several workers' medical and safety clearances had been improperly documented, base officials said.

Members of the Maryland Citizens Advisory Committee, which has worked closely with the Army on chemical agent destruction, said the incidents have not sparked any phone calls from concerned residents.

Progress "has been slower than what everyone had hoped for, but it's all part of the learning curve," said John Nunn, a committee member who lives in Kent County.

"I haven't gotten one phone call. No one's talked about it, said B. Daniel Riley, committee member in Harford County. "Then again, it could be due to public apathy and summer."

Joseph Lovrich, site project manager of the destruction plant, said the one troublesome area of the process is still trying to clean the faces of the containers, whose paint sometimes absorbs low levels of the mustard agent pouring out of the containers.

Lovrich said the plant is operating around the clock and had destroyed about 71 tons of mustard agent. He said he knew going into the retooled process that there would be kinks to work out of the process, so the past month's incidents haven't surprised him.

But he said, no agent has been released outside the plant and no workers -- who carry protective masks with them while working -- have been injured. "If we can keep our workers safe, we can keep the community and the environment safe," he said.