00001

01 U.S. ARMY CORPS OF ENGINEERS

02 OPEN HOUSE

03 ********************************************************

04 RE: Restoration Advisory Board

06 PLACE: Robertson Hall

06 South Carolina School for the

07 Deaf and the Blind

08 DATE: Tuesday, October 24, 1995

10 TIME: Scheduled 7:00 to 9:00

10 Actual 7:10 to 7:50

12 PRESENTATIONS

12 GIVEN BY: Suzy McKinney

13 Zapata Engineering, P.A.

13 1100 Kenilworth Avenue, Suite 104

14 Charlotte, North Carolina 28204

15 Wayne Bogan

15 Project Manager

16 U.S. Army Corps of Engineers

16 Charleston District

18 ALSO PRESENT: Manuel L. Zapata, P.E., President

18 Zapata Engineering, P.A.

19 1100 Kenilworth Avenue, Suite 104

19 Charlotte, North Carolina 28204

21 REPORTED BY: Sandy Satterwhite Reporting

21 P.O. Box 742

22 Roebuck, South Carolina 29376

22 (803)574-1455

00002

01 INDEX

02 Welcome by Ms. McKinney. . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

03 Presentation by Mr. Bogan. . . . . . . . . . . . 4

04 Presentation by Ms. McKinney . . . . . . . . . . 15

05 Questions and Answers. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18

06 Closing by Mr. Bogan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37

07 Certificate of Reporter. . . . . . . . . . . . . 40

00003

01 BY MS. MCKINNEY:

02 We would like to welcome you to the U.S. Army

03 Corps of Engineers Open House this evening. We would

04 like to thank you for your time and your interest in

05 the Ordnance Removal Activities that are underway at

06 the former Camp Croft.

07 Tonight we would like to take this opportunity

08 to present information on the activities that are

09 being conducted by the Corps of Engineers, to tell you

10 about the future activities that are going to occur,

11 to describe how you can become involved, and, most

12 importantly, to allow you the opportunity to ask

13 questions and provide us your comments and input this

14 evening.

15 We will be available after the meeting. If

16 anyone has any additional comments, we would like to

17 further carry on the discussion.

18 Firstly, I'd like to introduce ourselves. My

19 name is Suzy McKinney. I'm with Zapata Engineering

20 from Charlotte, North Carolina. We've been awarded

21 the contract by the Corps of Engineers to establish

22 the Restoration Advisory Board.

23 Sitting up here also this evening is Manuel

24 Zapata, President of Zapata Engineering, and Wayne

25 Bogan, the Project Manager for the Corps of Engineers,

00004

01 Charleston District.

02 Let's briefly review the agenda for this

03 evening. We will be discussing the history of the

04 former Camp Croft, what has prompted the removal

05 actions. We're going to talk about the activities

06 that have occurred to date, the evaluations and the

07 time critical removal actions.

08 We are going to review some of the ordnance that

09 has been found at the former camp and talk briefly

10 about the next steps.

11 We will also go over the roles and

12 responsibilities of the Restoration Advisory Board and

13 how folks can become involved and be nominated and

14 considered for being represented on the Board, and

15 then we will open the floor to any questions and

16 answers.

17 Now I'd like to go ahead and turn the

18 presentation over to Mr. Bogan.

19 BY MR. BOGAN:

20 Good evening. My name is Wayne Bogan. I'm the

21 Project Manager for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers

22 for the Charleston District. A couple of you I've met

23 before and some of you I haven't. I want to thank you

24 for being here tonight.

25 This is your first opportunity to potentially be

00005

01 a member of the Restoration Advisory Board which is a

02 citizens group to provide to us, the Army Corps of

03 Engineers, how we're going to clean up Camp Croft.

04 My presentation, there was a copy of it in the

05 back, so as I go through my slides, you can flip

06 through it. If you don't have a copy of it, I'll go

07 back and get you one or we can hand out one if you

08 need one. All right.

09 We'll have questions after Suzy goes through her

10 parts. You can ask anything about what I say, about

11 what's going on or anything about the Restoration

12 Advisory Board.

13 What we want to with the Restoration Advisory

14 Board is that as we come in and we start to clean up

15 old Camp Croft, and I'll go out through kind of a

16 quick time line as I go through my slides.

17 This will be your chance to come in, read the

18 documents we've produced, find out what we found and

19 what we found. We'll look at each piece of property

20 that has ordnance on it, everything from mortars to

21 bullets and rifles, and we'll say, "Okay. Would this

22 piece of property -- depending on how much is there,

23 this is how we're going to clean up."

24 That will be your opportunity to look at that,

25 come back and tell us what you think is appropriate.

00006

01 We may come back and say, "Well, you know, there's

02 really not a whole lot there, and we think you only

03 need to clean up a little bit, and we'll spend two

04 weeks out there just walking the surface and making

05 sure nothing is there."

06 As a group, you may come back and say, "Well, we

07 don't agree with that. We want you to come back and

08 dig down to six inches for all the different areas,"

09 or two feet, whatever the group thinks appropriate.

10 And then your comments will be taken into

11 consideration as to how we do the cleanup.

12 Just a quick site history. Former Camp Croft,

13 as most of you knew or most of you know, was purchased

14 in 1941 for use as an Army Training Facility and

15 consists over 19,000 acres.

16 The site during its existence was home to more

17 than 250,000 troops as they came through for basic

18 training for replacement troops for those troops we

19 had in Europe.

20 The facility was turned over to the War Assets

21 Administration, as were most to the World War II

22 facilities that were used for training during World

23 War II, in 1947, and that property was sold in 1950.

24 All right. A little over 7,000 acres went to

25 what is now Camp Croft State Park. The rest of

00007

01 acreage, a little over 11,900 acres, went to the

02 private landowners and to any companies that purchased

03 in that area.

04 The site consisted of a series of training

05 ranges, firing and impact ranges that consisted of

06 about 17,000 acres. On that facility we had a gas

07 chamber and a gas obstacle course which were used up

08 near the Kohler plant. We've looked at those areas

09 and to this date we have found no structures or no

10 evidence of anything related to gas training that

11 happened at the site. We know it was there. We've

12 interviewed people who know they did it, but we've

13 found nothing to this point, which is great for us.

14 There was a grenade court that covered 175

15 acres. No evidence of the grenade remains at the

16 site. We have found grenades in various parts of Camp

17 Croft, but this grenade court, it seems that they did

18 a pretty good job of cleaning it up.

19 We have a cantonment area or the barracks area

20 which covered 167 acres, which is currently a

21 residential area right down the road which most of you

22 know about.

23 Okay. So why did we start now? Why didn't we

24 start cleaning this up as soon as Camp Croft was

25 shutdown in 1950 and sold off?

00008

01 What happened was the Defense Environmental

02 Restoration Program for Formerly Used Defense Sites or

03 the DERP-FUDS or FUDS, the Formerly Used Defense Sites

04 were started in 1986. It was about the same time that

05 the superfund program was re -- re-amended.

06 The purpose was to go back and find any

07 environmental problems that we had in cleaning these

08 up. Congress wanted to clean up all these FUDS sites

09 by the year 2000.

10 Former Camp Croft is one of over 200 sites

11 within the State of South Carolina alone that we're

12 looking at. There's somewhere around 8,000 sites

13 nationwide. We've spent essentially the past nine to

14 ten years looking at trying to find what did the Army

15 leave, what did the Navy leave, and what did the Army

16 Air Corps leave at that time.

17 All right. Broken down chronologically, we look

18 at four different areas. First, we look for what they

19 call hazardous toxic radiological waste. Simply we

20 look for any landfills, any soil contamination,

21 ground water contamination, anything that they just

22 kind of dumped and buried which was quite common at

23 the time.

24 Secondly, we look for containerized hazardous

25 wastes, underground storage tanks. There were a lot

00009

01 of these at the old airports. Spartanburg County

02 Airport here was an old Army airfield at the time. All right.

03 We went -- go back there and we looked to see did they

04 leave the fuel tanks in the ground and are they

05 leaking? If they left them in the ground, we clean

06 them up to prevent them from leaking. If any of them

07 have leaked, like we had in Greenwood, which on that,

08 we cleaned this up and cleaned up the tanks that were

09 leaking and all the soil.

10 The other is ordnance and explosive wastes,

11 which we're dealing with primarily here at Camp Croft

12 right now, and that's dealing with mortars, artillery

13 shells, any explosives that they used during the

14 training.

15 Last is dealing with dangerous buildings. If

16 there is a building on a facility where a child or

17 someone could walk through and potentially be killed,

18 we'll get rid of the building, no questions asked. If

19 there is asbestos in the building as we're removing it

20 or lead based paint, we'll get those also; but only if

21 the building has the potential of hurting someone and

22 killing someone, we will remove it. If it's just

23 sitting there still in good shape, we'll leave it to

24 the current landowner.

25 In 1991, I came back and I looked at Camp Croft

00010

01 initially and I found that there were two landfills.

02 We haven't determined any underground storage tanks.

03 If anybody knows of any, please let me know. We found

04 what I thought was just one mortar impact range, which

05 has turned into vastly larger than what we initially

06 thought, and no buildings to be removed.

07 Once I found the landfills and the mortar impact

08 range, we said, "Okay. We've got enough to start

09 working on a project."

10 We called Washington. We sent up our letters

11 and requested that they help us out, provide funding

12 for us to clean up Camp Croft.

13 In 1993, we began the Ordnance Project and

14 received funding from Washington. The Ordnance

15 Project quickly is divided into four phases: An

16 Archive Search Report, where we go back and we have a

17 copy of it sitting out in front, I think, for you to

18 go through and you look at all of the old maps, all

19 the old photos, anything we could find. We talked to

20 people, and say, "Okay. What did you do at Camp

21 Croft," and try to find exactly what was there and

22 what was used and help us -- it helps us to find out

23 what to clean up.

24 The next is the Engineering Evaluation and Cost

25 Analysis. We take the information from the Archives

00011

01 Search Report and we go out and sample it, one piece

02 of property, and we say, "Okay. Approximately, how

03 much is here?" You can't look at every bit of the

04 acreage because you've got 19,000 acres. We try to

05 look at as much as we can in a cost effective manner,

06 because you, the taxpayer, is paying for that, and I,

07 as a taxpayer, am paying for it.

08 The EE/CA comes in and tells us, "Okay. We

09 found ordnance here. We didn't find it here," and we

10 go through that, and say, "Okay. This is how we're

11 going to clean it up."

12 Then we get to EE/CA, and we say, "Okay. This

13 is where it is. We decide how we're going to clean it

14 up." Then we come in and do remedial action, where we

15 actually remove anything that we found.

16 There is one additional thing that we can do.

17 It's called a time critical removal action. All

18 right. This is an emergency action to remove ordnance

19 from areas where the public is imminent danger. All

20 right. Where there's a chance where somebody can walk

21 out and look at a particular area and some kid or

22 someone in the street will walk out and get killed

23 from that piece of ordnance, then we go in there and

24 we clean that up as soon as we can, if it's -- if

25 there's enough there.

00012

01 All right. It's a very short time frame to do

02 this and it's very expensive. It's anywhere from five

03 to ten times more expensive than us coming through and

04 taking our time to clean it.

05 All right. If needed, we'll do a time critical

06 removal. If it's not needed, we try not to do it,

07 because instead of spending, you know, $5 for

08 something, we end up having to spend $100 and it's not

09 a good idea.

10 So what have we done so far? We've completed

11 two Archive Search Reports, interviews, looked at

12 maps, photos, talked with different people and found

13 out what they did.

14 All right. We took that information. We're in

15 the process of completing the Engineering

16 Evaluation/Cost Analysis right now. Okay. We hope to

17 have a public meeting sometime within the next two to

18 three weeks to present this information where we've

19 looked at various areas, and we've said, "Okay. We

20 know what is here. We know what's not here, and this

21 is what we propose to do as far as cleanup."

22 As RAB members, you'll look at this information

23 and say, "Okay. We agree with you, Corps of

24 Engineers," or "We don't agree with you," and you tell

25 us why.

00013

01 Once this is presented next month and we'll come

02 in and do the remedial design for the cleanup. Okay.

03 The remedial design will be fairly -- it will be

04 fairly standard in cleanup, unless we run into

05 anything really unusual.

06 Okay. We've got crews out right now doing some

07 additional site surveys trying to find -- that's why

08 some of you might have gotten Right of Entries

09 recently where we've requested that we go on your

10 property to do some additional searching. Okay.

11 Through the interviews, the Archive Research Report

12 found some additional areas we didn't know about to

13 begin with. We're looking at those right at this

14 moment.

15 Once we go through remedial design, then we go

16 into remedial action. Okay. Remedial action won't

17 start for a little while. It won't start until about

18 the summer of 1996. It will really be sometime in

19 next July before we actually go in and start cleaning

20 up different areas. Hopefully, the RAB will have a

21 chance to look at all the paperwork before then and

22 tell us how we're going to clean it up.

23 We have done two Time Critical Removal Actions

24 to date: Okay. One at Red Hill. It was an area

25 called Red Hill generally, and we've gone in and we

00014

01 found 105 millimeter artillery shells and we have some

02 examples of pictures of those back there; and also

03 within the State Park, we've done a Time Critical

04 Removal Action. We removed 60 and 81 millimeter

05 mortars.

06 The primary concern was around the ranger's

07 office where you have the campgrounds, the playground,

08 horse ring. We covered a 50 acre plot there and made

09 sure that all the campgrounds and horse rings were

10 clean so that anybody using that area wouldn't have

11 any problem. Okay.

12 What we've found so far, and you'll see a couple

13 of examples of those on the display back in the back,

14 are .30 and .50 caliber small arms rounds from the

15 rifles. We found 20 millimeter grenades, 60 and 81

16 millimeter mortar rounds. We found 105 millimeter

17 artillary rounds on Red Hill. That's the only place

18 we've found them so far; and 2.36 and 3.5 inch rockets

19 that were used in the training.

20 What do we plan on doing? Again, we're going to

21 have a public meeting mid-November to present the

22 EE/CA to the public and say, "This is what we found.

23 This is what we do, and what we're" -- say, "What

24 we're going to do as far as cleaning up." All right.

25 And we'll do the remedial design within two or three

00015

01 months after that, and then in the summer of '96,

02 we'll start the actual cleanup. That should run,

03 depending on how much we find, up to the year 2001.

04 It's a slow process to walk through the site

05 with the metal detectors, magnetometers is what

06 they're called, and try and find every little piece of

07 what potentially could be a mortar. It takes time.

08 It's expensive. As you're going through, you also

09 find something called shrapnel or pieces of metal, and

10 you have to determine which one is which.

11 Okay. I'll turn it back over to Suzy to tell

12 you about the RAB.

13 BY MS. MCKINNEY:

14 Okay. In order to provide the most effective

15 community involvement during this process, we will be

16 establishing a Restoration Advisory Board.

17 This Board will be comprised of up to 20

18 community members representing the diverse community

19 interests. There will be a community co-chair, as

20 well as an Army Corps of Engineers co-chair. Members

21 will serve a two year term, and it is anticipated that

22 the Board will meet once a month for the first six

23 months and then quarterly thereafter.

24 The role of this Restoration Advisory Board is

25 to provide a flow of information to the Corps of

00016

01 Engineers and then back to the community.

02 The responsibilities of the RAB will be to

03 provide guidance to the Corps of Engineers on the

04 ordnance removal activities; to hold regularly

05 scheduled meetings that are in a convenient location

06 and that are publicly announced; to review, evaluate

07 and provide comments on the Corps documents; to

08 recommend priorities among restoration activities; and

09 to identify standards for the ordnance removal that

10 will be consistent with planned land use.

11 In order to be considered for nomination to the

12 RAB, we do have community interest forms that have

13 been sent out and that are also available this

14 evening. If you would like to complete those and

15 return those, we will have a selection panel. It will

16 be comprised of five community representatives.

17 The selection panel will meet within the next

18 two to three weeks, review those community interest

19 forms and provide recommendations and nominations to

20 the Corps of Engineers for their approval.

21 The members, once we receive the approval from

22 the Corps of Engineers, we will notify the RAB members

23 verbally and in writing of their selection. So we

24 encourage you to fill out those forms and either leave

25 them with us this evening or mail them back. There

00017

01 are some self-addressed stamped envelopes, and those

02 should be returned by November 1st, so we have

03 adequate time to review.

04 If anyone would like to be considered in

05 assisting the selection process, if you would like to

06 speak with one of us, either Wayne or Manuel or myself

07 after the meeting, we'd also like to hear of your

08 interest in the selection panel.

09 Our role, the role of Zapata Engineering, will

10 be to provide support to the Restoration Advisory

11 Board. We'll provide an orientation on the ordnance,

12 unexploded ordnance. We will present draft by-laws or

13 standard operating procedures, which will be reviewed

14 and approved and amended, as necessary, by the Board.

15 We will ensure that any questions or issues that might

16 be raised during our Board meetings or come -- we come

17 to closure on those issues. We will provide

18 transcription services, as this evening, and provide

19 those needing summaries to everyone on our mailing

20 list and all the attendees and anyone, really, that's

21 interested in receiving any information. We'll make

22 sure they get transcripts and summaries of the

23 meetings.

24 All of the Board meetings will be open to the

25 public and will be announced adequate -- in adequate

00018

01 time frames in your newspapers.

02 We will also maintain all of this information at

03 the library, and that is our information repository

04 for documents, correspondence and any other materials

05 related to the former Camp Croft.

06 Now are we ready to open the floor? We would

07 like to go ahead and open the forum for any questions

08 and comments that you might have. If you would like

09 to stand up at the podium and clearly state your name,

10 and then state your question or comment or concern,

11 and we'll go ahead and do that at this time.

12 BY MR. BOGAN:

13 Any particular questions on how we're going to

14 clean up, how long, how it's going to affect you as a

15 potential homeowner or somebody here in town? We'll

16 answer all of your questions. Yes, ma'am.

17 BY MS. FRETWELL:

18 I'm Susan Fretwell. I've recently gotten a

19 request by you folks for the five year Right of Entry.

20 BY MR. BOGAN:

21 Yes, ma'am.

22 BY MS. FRETWELL:

23 Why do you need five years and what do you

24 envision doing that's going to take five years, and

25 how is that going to impact on me, and I'm asking

00019

01 questions that I know you can't answer, not even

02 knowing what site I have an interest in or what

03 acreage, but my questions are all posed based on the

04 fact that it seems like an awfully broad period of

05 time to grant that kind of Right of Entry, and I don't

06 want to not be cooperative, and I want all the help

07 that we can get making sure that the property that I

08 have an interest in is -- is as environmentally

09 correct as -- as is possible.

10 BY MR. BOGAN:

11 Right.

12 BY MS. FRETWELL:

13 But it would seem that could be accomplished

14 with less broad license being given. I mean, I've got

15 tenants on that property. I don't -- from that vein,

16 for all I know, you're going to knock on the door one

17 day and say, "Oops, you've got to leave for six

18 months," and I have some concerns like that that I

19 don't feel that I can just carte blanche give you all

20 five years Right of Entry, but I don't want to ---

21 BY MR. BOGAN:

22 I understand, and I'll try ---

23 BY MS. FRETWELL:

24 --- be unreasonable about it.

25 BY MR. BOGAN:

00020

01 Right. I'll try to answer all the different

02 parts there the best I can.

03 The right of entry that you received is fairly

04 vague. I've never personally liked it very much, but

05 what they do is our program, the Defense Environmental

06 Restoration for Formerly Used Defense Sites, covers

07 such a large area of cleanup that the Right of Entries

08 are a standard form that we send out.

09 The only thing that you can do is you can, in

10 talking with our real estate agent, you can modify the

11 Right of Entry to fit how you want it to -- if you

12 want it be for a six month period or a one year period

13 or for the full five years, that's up to you to decide

14 how you to want to give it.

15 The reason they're requesting five years is,

16 like I said, we're working on potentially going from

17 1996 through the year 2001 for cleanup; so if we do

18 find something on your piece of property, we'll come

19 in and we'll notify you of what we have found on that

20 piece of property, and we'll tell you how we're going

21 to clean it up and what time frame it's going to take

22 us to clean it up.

23 If we've got it for five years, so it's easier

24 for us to come in and say, "Okay. We're going to come

25 in, and we'll do it next year." And instead of having

00021

01 to come back to you next year and get another Right of

02 Entry, we've gotten one that just allows us to come

03 in, notifying you ahead of time that we want to come

04 on your property and work.

05 It does cover a large area as far as moving

06 people off, tenants, and that kind of thing, and one

07 of the reasons they do that is because if we find -- I

08 told you the gas chamber where we didn't find

09 anything, and I said it was a good thing -- if we were

10 to come up and find what they have are gas valves, all

11 right, we immediately move people off the area. All

12 right. The reason is because these glass valves

13 containing gas in them, usually called mustard gas or

14 lewisite. If a child was to drink one of those,

15 within seconds it can kill the child.

16 We believe in that case that we want to go ahead

17 and -- you want it immediately out, we'll bring in an

18 emergency unit out of Washington, and they'll clean it

19 up within days and get people back to their homes.

20 Of all the sites that the Corps has worked on at

21 this point, we haven't had to come in and just

22 immediately move people out, with the exception of one

23 site in D.C. where they did find mustard gas.

24 Again, from what I understand the Right of Entry

25 is that at some point you want to end the Right of

00022

01 Entry, then you have that option of doing that. All

02 right. We can talk with our real estate agent and

03 make sure that we can get that addressed for you.