President Neil Kerwin and his wife are in the process of moving back into their 4835 Glenbrook Rd. home, AU’s Director of Community and Local Government Relations Penny Pagano said during a Spring Valley Restoration Advisory Board meeting Tuesday night.
The move comes despite an ongoing “high priority” investigation for chemical munitions next door at the Army Corps of Engineers’ “Pit 3” dig.
Kerwin’s chief of staff David Taylor said it is not unusual for people to live near the excavation.
“Other people have been there in that neighborhood,” he said. “To have people living [in the neighborhood] or at 4835 — there’s nothing unusual about that.”
Because the President’s house lies within the Corps’ established 96-foot safety boundary, anyone staying there will have to be familiar with the Corps’ “public protection plan.”
The President’s house is the only structure within the 96-foot circle, said USACE Military Response Program Manager Dan Noble. However, other properties nearby are crossed by the arc but are not completely within the boundary.
“The Kerwins are not nervous about moving back in ... and indeed with the safety and security measures ... believe everything is going to be fine,” Taylor said.
He added that the main reason the President’s house was uninhabited was because work was still underway at the property and the Army Corps had leased it from the university.
Also at the meeting, Todd Beckwith, the project manager of the USACE military response program, presented different possibilities for munitions destruction.
Options included no action, open detonation, off-site disposal and on-site detonation.
Beckwith recommended that all World War I-era munitions found to date in and around AU, whether chemical or conventional, be destroyed by a controlled, on-site detonation within the Corps’ Explosive Destruction System.
Detonating the chemical munitions on-site could cost an estimated $630,000, while the cheapest option - an open detonation - would only cost an approximate $200,000, according to Beckwith.
An off-site disposal would cost approximately $850,000.
“It was a toss up between cost and safety issues ... and the safety trumped cost,” he said.
He added that such a controlled detonation could also minimize impacts from noise, contain fragmentation and capture waste products.
For an on-site detonation, Beckwith said, the Corps would not have to pursue a hazardous waste permit because the Spring Valley cleanup is executed in accordance with the Executing Response, Compensation and Liability Act of 1980 (CERCLA), also known as Superfund.
Congress established the law 29 years ago to facilitate the cleanup of hazardous waste sites.
“The CERCLA law specifically provides an exemption from obtaining permits,” Beckwith said. “The thinking was they don’t want to make the cleanup program overly burdensome with paperwork.”
Allen Hengst, co-founder of the Spring Valley Environmental Health Group and the circulation manager at the Pence Law Library in the Washington College of Law, raised concern about where the liquid waste produced from the detonation would be disposed.
“We’ll have to look at who will accept the material and what the pricing is at those different facilities,” Beckwith said.
You can reach this staff writer at ccottrelll@theeagleonline.com.
