The Radford Army Ammunitions Plant has been operating in southwestern Virginia for longer than most people can remember. It began manufacturing explosives to help win World War Two , disposing of the waste on site. Some is burned outdoors along the banks of the New River. With its permit for outdoor burning up for renewal, people are urging regulators to take a closer look at how operations at the plant affect the air and water ---and to share more information with the public.
Greg Nelson lives along the fence line of the Radford Army Ammunitions Plant. He’s working on his doctorate in Science and Technology at Virginia Tech and he works part time at a farm in Ellett Valley. He loves to garden and began growing one in his yard as a child. But when he was 13 he stopped and never planted near his house again. He was concerned pollution from outdoor burning at the arsenal, close enough that he could see and smell it from his yard-- could contaminate it.
“Growing up half a mile from the site and not being able to drink your water because of the fear of what might be in it. And you see the people in your life get cancer, people I know can’t even count the number of people with cancer on their fingers. I’m figuring out what it means to grow up next to a facility that for 75 years has produced munitions for our army. And that’s a good thing. Our army needs to have its munitions. We’re not trying to interfere with that. What we want to have is offsite, reproducible studies."
The Department of Environmental quality, which is the permitting agency for the Arsenal insists that any pollution put out by the plant dissipates to a level at which it is not harmful. It has no plans to commission independent testing.
“If you don’t look for something, you’re not going to find it. It’s a scary situation in some ways because I don’t know what’s going on.”
Knowing that the greatest fears come from a lack of information, Nelson began finding out everything he could about what goes on at the Radford Arsenal. It became part of the topic of the doctoral dissertation he’s defending this month. And that goes hand in hand with his personal activism.
“It’s a passionate subject for someone who arrives at a consciousness about what is going on half a mile from their house. And their house is shaking and you’re seeing plumes. And you know, when there are yellow plumes of smoke drifting over their homes every day. How is that safe? I don’t know what’s in the smoke.
Nelson is part of a group of activists, The Environmental Patriots of the New River Valley, a watch dog that keeps a close eye on the arsenal. He argues, in his dissertation and to anyone who will listen, that it’s not possible to know what’s actually happening to the air and the water off site because no real world, real time testinghas ever been done. Instead computer models of air and water flows are used to estimate the path of pollutants. BAE Systems, which operates the arsenal, has said drone testing is expected to begin in August.
“Things take time here is what I’ve noticed. In Appalachia, people are set in their ways. We’re far away from the city and we’re far away from the coast. In terms of looking at cities with dynamic change, they’re always on the coast because the tide changes. And here, the tide is not here. The mountains are here. The oldest mountains in the world, stable ground, rock hard granite is the geology of the area, so I think the geology impacts the people a lot too.”
And while Greg Nelson says his inquiries about what is going on at the Radford Arsenal have largely fallen on deaf ears, he acknowledges there are also rumblings of change. The arsenal will soon submit a permit application to DEQ for renewal, allowing it to continue toxic waste burning. But it’s also applying for a permit to design and build a new, contained incinerator that would replace the need for most but not all of its outdoor burning. On its website, it describes that decision as “echoing a desire by the public” to reduce the amount of open burning at the plant. The Radford Arsenal will soon break ground for a new gas power plant on site, to replace its 1941 era coal burning plant.
A public comment period will begin after the arsenal submits its permits by June 2016.
