Second mortar shell unearthed at former Camp Sibert

By Kim Craft, Times Staff Writer
Published July 15, 2006

Workers cleaning up the former Camp Sibert military base found on Thursday another 4.2-inch mortar shell containing an undetermined liquid.

Employees with Parsons Corp., the company contracted by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to do the investigative work, dug up the round while working on farm land in St. Clair County near Steele as part of a planned Formerly Used Defense Site remediation that is expected to take until 2008.

Digging and clearing work on that area, designated as Site 8 by the Corps, began in April, and Thursday's discovery was the second mortar unearthed there. The second round was found about 100 feet from where a 4.2-inch shell was found June 27.

Site 8 was the Toxic Munitions Impact Area of the military camp where solders trained with chemical weapons during World War II. Work at the site is coordinated from a base site at the dead end of Duncan Farm Road off Steele Station Road.

The mortar found Thursday was treated the same way as the one found earlier, with unexploded ordnance contractor personnel performing the initial identification and determining the item to possibly be a full round.

E. Patrick Robbins, chief legislative and public affairs spokesman for the Corps, said state and local officials were notified.

"As rehearsed in training, the safety and notification plans went into effect immediately," he said.

The on-site Technical Escort team was activated. It proceeded to the area where the mortar was dug up and X-rayed it, determining the fill was liquid.

"The plan calls for final determination of the contents to be made at a later date in the remediation process," Robbins said.

The round was packed and transported to the secure interim holding facility on Camp Sibert where it will be stored until a final assessment is made.

Corps spokeswoman Marilyn Phipps said the assessment might not be done until the cleanup process at Site 8 is completed in about two years.

"They're double sealed in a double-sealed storage area, so it's like quadruple sealed," she said. Additionally, Phipps said the mortars are under 24-hour guard.

Phipps said an assessment of mortars found might be done sooner if more ordnance than anticipated is found as the site is cleaned up to identify any left-behind weapons.

"If we find so many that they fill up the containment area, we'd have to do it sooner," she said, "but the plan is to examine them toward the end of the remediation."

She said the plan is to examine all the mortars found at one time because it is expensive to move the necessary equipment to the site from the Corps facility at Aberdeen Proving Ground, Md.

Parsons workers have uncovered numerous pieces of ordnance and cultural debris since beginning work at Site 8 in the spring.

Site 8 includes pastureland where an intact, live chemical round was discovered in 2002.

That 4.2-inch mortar shell, about 21 inches long, was found nose-end up, about 6 to 8 inches deep in the soil. The round was detonated and the choking agent inside it was neutralized.

Mapping of 128 acres of the central part of the site with metal detectors identified 8,673 suspect locations. On-site digging will determine whether those areas contain chemical weapons or metal scrap, including nails, barbed wire, horseshoes, nonmetallic soil, rocks and other debris.

Camp Sibert is part of the Formerly Used Defense Sites program established in 1986 by Congress to clean up former military properties.