Bombs away
The physical cleanup of the Former Lowry Bombing and
Gunnery Range near Aurora is only a quarter of the way done but already
behind schedule.
Jeff Edson, Remediation and Restoration Unit Leader with the Colorado Department
of Public Health and Environment, told an environmental studies class at CU
on Tuesday that 26 percent of the sprawling range has been swept for old ordnance
as of the end of January.
Edson brought the carcasses of rusty bombs for show-and-tell to professor
Adrienne Anderson's undergraduate class, "Environmental Ethics: Race, Class
& Pollution."
The bombs he brought weren't live, of course.
He said "hundreds of thousands" of pieces of munitions - used bullets and
used bombs - have been recovered from the site since the mid-1990s, while
about 3,000 pieces of live ordnance - grenades, mortars, rocket warheads,
anti-personnel mines, fragmentation bombs and mustard gas - have been safely
destroyed.
"A pin drop of mustard (agent) can kill you, so you
can understand the concern," Edson said.
Edson said no one has been hurt by the unexploded ordnance, except for a
farmer who was frightened when his truck hit a white phosphorus bomb.
More money would shorten the timetable of the cleanup, he said.
"I don't want to get too political, but the money we spend to clean up these
sites is a pittance compared to what needs to be done," Edson said.
The federal government allots $8 million each year for the cleanup, and
Edson said the price tag for the entire project is estimated at between
$100 million and $150 million. This budget shortfall is in part to blame
for the lengthening timetable for the cleanup: The completion date - originally
2000 - has been pushed back to 2014.
The range, located south of Denver International Airport
and adjacent the city of Aurora, once served Lowry Air Force Base. The Colorado
State Board of Land Commissioners, private landowners and the city of Aurora
now control segments of the site.
The 92-square-mile area is designated as a "formerly used defense site,"
and as such, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is responsible for its cleanup,
while the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment is responsible
for regulatory oversight.
Removing unexploded ordnances takes time. After a plane takes aerial reconnaissance
of the range, workers drag a device called a magnetometer yard-by-yard across
the earth. When the magnetometer detects metal in the ground, the area is
flagged and a hole is dug so that the metal is retrieved.
But more often than not, work crews uncover a beer can or a lead fragment
instead of a bomb. The process is frustrating and laborious, Edson said.
With more funds, Edson said the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers could put 16
work crews on the ground - a fourfold increase in manpower than what the Corps
has today.
While much of the range is used for farming and grazing, the public is increasingly
using the area.
The range frames the 840-acre Aurora Reservoir, a popular spot for recreation,
while a number of housing developments have been built on the range.
Professor Anderson said that even if all the old munitions are one day extracted
from the range, people should not live or play there until studies about chemical
pollution are completed.
"Virtually nothing has been done (to study) soil contamination, yet kids
can go and play out there," Anderson said.
Anderson, who found out last week her teaching contract at CU would not
be renewed after a decade of service, has been an outspoken critic of the
cleanup undertaken at the range.
She called it an "environmental and economic disaster."
She plans to write a book critiquing the cleanup, she said.
Edson said those who get their drinking water from Aurora Reservoir should
not be unduly alarmed.
"I would be shocked to find munitions concentrations in the water because
it's just a huge body of water," he said.