The excavation of 4825 Glenbrook Road, an AU-owned house located behind the south side of campus, for WWI weapons began Sept. 23. The dig is scheduled to last a year.
The Army Corps of Engineers, which is supervising the excavation, expects to find experimental weapons materials during this stage of the cleanup.
Munitions from World War I were discovered at the Glenbrook property in 2001 and 2010, The Eagle previously reported. The Army tested various types of weapons in D.C.’s Spring Valley neighborhood, including at AU, during WWI. The Corps has been in charge of the cleanup since the first buried materials were discovered in 1993.
AU sent a memorandum to the University community on Sept. 18 about how to proceed in the event of an emergency at the Glenbrook site. In addition to the community-wide email, AU will also notify students of the new procedures via on-campus video screens and fliers, according to Assistant Vice President for External Relations and Auxiliary Services Linda Argo.
AU’s Watkins Hall and part of Jacobs Field are in the “shelter-in-place” zone near Glenbrook, which means that the sites may be affected by the excavation.
In case of an emergency, the AU memo directs those in that zone to find immediate cover, seal the area to the outside, and wait for further instructions from the building marshal. The Corps also installed sirens at the Glenbrook site and in Watkins Hall to alert those in the zone should all of the engineering controls fail.
The Corps plans to test the alarms on the first Wednesday of every month at 4:05 p.m., but nearby residents and designated AU staff will be notified that it is a drill. Students in the building will not have to take shelter.
“During the almost 21-year history of the Spring Valley Formerly Used Defense Site project, we have performed nine other similar operations in the community and the Shelter-in-Place program has never been implemented,” Andrea Takash, a public affairs specialist for the Corps, said in an email.
Argo spoke at a Spring Valley Resident Advisory Board meeting on Sept. 10 to discuss the latest on the Glenbrook site.
The meeting also covered the safety measures put in place at the Glenbrook property. The Corps installed a chemical filtration system and real-time air monitoring, among other things, to mitigate the risk to the public during the project.
dmitchell@theeagleonline.com
