CAMP CROFT
RESTORATION ADVISORY BOARD MEETING
********************************************************
PLACE: SC School for the Deaf
and the Blind
Robertson
Hall
DATE: Tuesday, May 14, 1996
TIME: 7:06 p.m. to 8:10
p.m.
PRESENTATIONS
GIVEN BY: David Mullinax
RAB
Chairperson
Suzy
McKinney
Zapata
Engineering, P.A.
1100
Kenilworth Avenue, Suite 104
Charlotte,
North Carolina 28204
Patti Berry
U.S. Army
Corps of Engineers
Huntsville
Division
BOARD MEMBERS
PRESENT: Robert W. Powell, Jr.
George
Mullinax
Kathy
Burrell
Gary Hayes
Gerald T.
Thurmond
Sherry
Wheeler
Clary H.
Smith
William
Littlejohn, Jr.
David
Mullinax
Gerard Perry
Dot Sloan
Harold D.
Osborne
James
B. Thompson
Darwin J.
Wilson
John E.
Keith
REPORTED BY: Sandy Satterwhite
ALSO
PRESENT: Lincoln Blake
Greg Bayuga
INDEX
Welcome by
Mr. David Mullinax. . . . . . . . . . . . 3
Welcome by
Ms. McKinney. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
Videotape
Presentation by Ms. Berry. . . . . . . . . 5
Overview of
Upcoming Removal Activities by Ms. Berry 6
New Business
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .24
Review of
Agenda Items for June Meeting. . . . . . .54
Closing
Remarks. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .70
Certificate
of Reporter. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .71
BY MR. DAVID MULLINAX:
Let's go ahead and get started. Everybody take
their seats,
please. I'd like to welcome everybody
to the May
meeting of the Camp Croft Restoration
Advisory
Board.
There are a few points I would like
to go ahead
and cover
now so we don't have any problems later on
in the
meeting.
I just ask that if anybody is
speaking, give
them the
courtesy and respect that the deserve and let
them
speak. No chitchatting in the
background or
choral
responses; and if you have a question or a
specific
question, please address it to the person
that you'd
like to ask it to and he will respond, and
I just ask
that there will be no choral responses to
any
questions that are asked.
That will help us, everybody else
that's
interested
in what's going on and the stenographer
here,
because she can only hear one person at a time.
I appreciate
your cooperation.
I'll turn it over to Ms. McKinney
here with
Zapata
Engineering.
BY MS. MCKINNEY:
Good evening. I'd like to introduce a few folks
that are
here with us this evening. They will be
doing a bulk
of our presentations.
We have Lincoln Blake from the
Charleston
District
Corp of Engineers. Wayne Bogan is still
on
Reserves
throughout this coming week, so we have some
other folks
in his place. We have Ms. Patti Berry
and
Grey Bayuga
from the Huntsville Division.
On the table you have several
handout materials.
You have a revised
information pamphlet that will be
distributed
to the Park, to the library and to the
Chamber of
Commerce. We'll also send those to
everyone who
is on our mailing list and have those
available
through Wayne.
If anybody would like extra copies,
feel free to
take some
from out front, and for you in the audience,
also help
yourself to those pamphlets.
We also have copies of the thank you
letters
that were
prepared as a follow up from the last
meeting to
the congressional delegates.
You have a copy of the one foot
depth clearance
memo that we
discussed last month and there's a
schedule for
the removal activities that will be
taking place
starting within the next few weeks and
Patti Berry
is going to review that schedule.
Are there any questions on the
materials for
tonight?
(NO
RESPONSE)
BY MS. MCKINNEY:
Okay. Patti.
BY MS. BERRY:
My name is Patti Berry, and I'm from
the Corp of
Engineers in
Huntsville, and Wayne Bogan had asked me
to bring a
videotape of showing some removal
activities,
and so I'll go ahead and show you that.
This is at one of our projects in
Tennessee that
we have done
some removal action, and the contractor
will pretty
much walk you through it, and this is
basically
what we'll also be doing here at Camp Croft,
so ---
(PRESENTATION
OF VIDEOTAPE)
BY MS. BERRY:
What they do is they five foot lanes
that
they'll
sweep and just go back and forth and move each
lane over as
they finish it, which is what they're
doing here.
And this -- these holes that they're
digging are
the areas
that they've flagged where they've detected
something,
so now they're going in to dig for them.
BY DR. KEITH:
How deep will they go with the
shovel?
BY MS. BERRY:
Well, until they find
something. Right now
they're
required to go at least two feet.
BY DR. KEITH:
Two feet.
BY MS. BERRY:
But they're going to detect to four
feet, and if
they find
something between two and four, then they'll
-- the
safety -- the safety guy on the site will
determine
whether to go deeper.
BY MR. MCBAIN:
Ma'am, what was this and how long an
area or
wherever
they're working at been in the ground?
BY MR. BAYUGA:
Since the end of the 1940s, there
were eight 37
millimeter
projectiles that they're finding.
They'll
show
them. They'll show them here in a
minute.
(END OF
VIDEOTAPE PRESENTATION)
BY MS. BERRY:
That was just an overview, I guess,
of what
we'll be
doing out here, and did you all have any
questions on
anything on the video?
(NO RESPONSE)
BY MS. BERRY:
Okay. Then I guess I'll go ahead and discuss
the
schedule. You should have received a
handout.
We have issued the contractor the
notice to
proceed. We gave that to them yesterday, and they
will be
starting to mobilize on Monday, the 20th of
May.
For the next couple of weeks they'll
be
mobilizing
to the site, setting up their trailers,
getting
their vehicles they need and their equipment
to the site;
and we'll also be, at this time, waiting
on approval
from our headquarters for their safety
plans. So hopefully we'll get that in the next
couple
of weeks,
and then they'll be able to start the actual
intrusive
work, which you saw in the video was where
they
actually dig for the ordnance that they find.
They're going to be starting in --
in the Park
in the area
of Operable Unit 7, which is the
campground
area, and they plan to start that early
June,
hopefully as soon as we get the approval from
headquarters. And they're projecting that that will
take them
into October, if you'll look on the schedule
here.
And then from there, they'll go to
Operable Unit
1B and Area
39, and then on to Operable Unit 2 and 3;
and, as you
can see, they're projecting that this will
take about
eight months to do the whole -- the total
removal
action, and then there will be follow up
actions as
far as developing the final reports and
getting that
approved.
BY MR. BLAKE:
Patti, they might -- it's a little
hard to see,
but it might
be good if you just point out where those
areas are
on, generally, on the map.
BY MS. BERRY:
Okay. The first area they'll start on is
Operable
Unit 7, which is the campgrounds and the area
near the
lake here, the horse rings -- the horse ring
and the --
and then from there, they'll go to 1B,
which is up
here, and then that area they'll clear the
horse trails
to two feet and then do a surface
clearance
there. This is the Park area they're going
to clear to
two feet.
Then they'll move to Area 39, which
is this red
-- these
little red polygons here, and there they're
going to be
clearing the horse trails in that area to
two feet,
also.
Then Operable Unit 2 is this area
right here by
Henningston
Road, and that will be surface cleared,
except the
horse trails will be cleared to two feet in
that area.
And then the area Operable Unit 3 is
the
residential
area over by the golf course, and that
will be
cleared to two feet.
And, again, they'll have to do their
final
report and
get that approved and they're projecting it
will take
eight months for the removal.
And, again, they'll -- should be
starting next
Monday, so
they'll be out to the Park area next
Monday.
BY MR. PERRY:
How many teams do they have to have?
BY MS. BERRY:
Right now they have three teams that
are
scheduled to
have work.
BY MR. PERRY:
Well, we were told that they were
going to put
one team at
1B while the other two teams were going to
be working
at 7.
BY MS. BERRY:
We can. We have the flexibility to do that, and
we would --
we can do that, but, you know, if we do
that, then
Area 7 will just take a little bit longer
and -- but
right now, they're just projecting three
teams, and
the contract is flexible enough that we can
pretty much
tell them which areas to work in when we
want them
to, so -- and I know Wayne had mentioned
that to me,
so I know about that, so ---
BY MR. HAYES:
On -- on this it shows on ID-15
00U3, it shows
very little
time. You say you're just doing surface
there, so
that's ---
BY MS. BERRY:
No, that's two -- two feet
clearance, but that's
-- I think
it's only about ---
BY MR. HAYES:
That's going to be one of the worst
places,
though, and
it's just showing about a weeks worth --
worth of
work or less.
BY MS. BERRY:
But I think ---
BY MR. HAYES:
Unless it's ---
BY MS. BERRY:
--- that's only five acres, as
opposed to like
in the -- in
the Park area. Ithink the 00U7 is like
170
acres.
You know, this Area 2 is, I think,
another 100
or 300 acres
or so, and it's based -- you know, I
think in
Area 3 it's maybe five acres, so ---
BY MR. BLAKE:
I thing, if you recall, 3 was the
one they found
some, I
guess, several ---
BY MS. BERRY:
Hand grenades.
BY MR. BLAKE:
--- practice grenades. Is that the right area?
BY MR. HAYES:
That's Henningston Road, right?
BY MS. BERRY:
No.
BY MR. BLAKE:
No.
BY MS. BERRY:
Area 3 is the golf course,
residential area.
BY MR. GEORGE MULLINAX:
Wedgewood Drive.
BY MR. HAYES:
Oh, Wedgewood Drive.
BY MR. BLAKE:
It's Wedge ---
BY MS. BERRY:
002 is the Henningston Road, and
that ---
BY MR. GEORGE MULLINAX:
That's the worst area.
BY MR. HAYES:
That's the worst. Okay.
BY MS. BERRY:
Yeah.
BY MR. GEORGE MULLINAX:
Area 3 is the golf course.
BY MR. BLAKE:
Yeah. Right. 3 is the golf
course, and it's a
real small
area.
BY MR. HAYES:
Okay. When she was pointing them out, I must
have got
turned around.
BY MR. BLAKE:
Right.
BY MS. BERRY:
Yeah, 00U2 is just surface clearance,
and
they're
saying it's going to take about three months
in that
area, so ---
BY MR. BLAKE:
I guess the other important thing
that we want
to point out
about the schedule, when they get through
with 1B and
7, that area of the Park could be reopened
while
they're working on 2.
BY MR. GEORGE MULLINAX:
That's the question I was going to
ask. I mean,
but, like I
say, if they don't find anything, they
might go
through it faster, right?
BY MR. BLAKE:
Correct.
BY MR. GEORGE MULLINAX:
And then open it back up to the
public?
BY MS. BERRY:
Yes, sir.
BY MR. BLAKE:
Yeah, that's a possibility.
BY MR. CLARY SMITH:
Let me ask you a question on the
video, were
these solid
projectiles on the video or were they high
explosive
37s and 57s?
BY MR. BAYUGA:
They were all 37.
BY MR. CLARY SMITH:
37.
BY MR. BAYUGA:
They all contained a black powder
fill that was
a high
explosive.
BY MR. CLARY SMITH:
High explosive?
BY MR. BAYUGA:
Correct.
BY MR. CLARY SMITH:
Now these down in Camp Croft,
they're not --
they were
not high explosive, were they?
BY MR. BAYUGA:
There's a combination of both. There were high
explosive
rounds that were found, illumination rounds
that were
found and solid practice rounds were found.
BY MR. CLARY SMITH:
I never saw an explosion on a 37 or
a 57 from
the ---
BY MR. BAYUGA:
The ones that ---
BY MR. CLARY SMITH:
--- from the firing range, because
we live right
across from
it.
BY MR. BAYUGA:
Okay. What ---
BY MR. CLARY SMITH:
Everything was solid projectiles
because we
picked them
up.
BY MR. BAYUGA:
They do make them like that, and the
black
powder one
is more of a spotting charge than the
explosion. These were black powder filled, and the
explosion is
not any more than a spotting charge for
the person
to shoot it, so it's not a composition B or
a real high
explosive. It's a black powder, which
is
classified
as a high explosive, but not quite as
powerful as
other high explosives.
BY MR. CLARY SMITH:
But every one of the 37s that you
find, are you
-- you will
explode them, in other words?
BY MR. BAYUGA:
Correct. If they cannot determine if it's a
solid round
or not, then they would detonate it.
And each training range will use
different
items. They could have used all solid 37s out here,
but this
range at Tennessee they used a black powder
spotting
charge filled.
BY MR. KIM KEITH:
Clary, are you saying when you were
sitting
there and
you were living out there and they were
shooting
rounds, you never saw anything explode?
BY MR. CLARY SMITH:
That's right.
BY MR. KIM KEITH:
They were just merely hitting the
ground and
marking
where they hit?
BY MR. CLARY SMITH:
Right.
BY MR. KIM KEITH:
So you actually lived through this
training
facility and
action and never saw anything explode?
BY MR. CLARY SMITH:
Not on the -- not on the antitank
range, no.
BY MR. BAYUGA:
Okay. Again, on an antitank round, it doesn't
really need
to explode. They want to penetrate the
armor shell
of the tank. Once it gets inside there,
it will
bounce around and ---
BY MR. CLARY SMITH:
They didn't have but one tank down
there.
BY MR. BAYUGA:
Okay.
BY MR. CLARY SMITH:
They didn't have but one tank and
---
BY MR. DUBEAU:
They had three.
BY MR. CLARY SMITH:
And they shot at moving targets.
BY MR. DUBEAU:
They had three.
BY MR. CLARY SMITH:
They didn't have but one down there
when -- when
-- when they
were shooting at ---
BY MR. DUBEAU:
I know what was out there. I was out there
training
then.
BY MR. CLARY SMITH:
We were there for the whole time.
BY MR. DUBEAU:
Yeah, I know you were, but you had
to work, too.
You couldn't
witness everything that took place out on
the range.
BY MR. CLARY SMITH:
They -- they had moving
targets. They had a
tractor that
had moving targets.
BY MR. DUBEAU:
That's right. That's exactly right.
BY MR. CLARY SMITH:
They had one stationary tank. I never -- and
I'm sure
Russell can -- I never saw any. Did
you,
Russell?
BY MR. RUSSELL SMITH:
Well, we never found any and never
saw any, but
we used to
sit around there and watch. We were
teen-agers. We weren't working, Mr. DuBeau. We were
teen-agers.
BY MR. DUBEAU:
Well, now wait, I'm not questioning
your ---
BY MR. RUSSELL SMITH:
We would go down there and watch
them just
solely to
watch them shoot them, and then we would go
down there
and pick them up and see if we could find
them. We never saw any shrapnel.
Clary is right. They had one tank. That was at
the end of
the war. The war in June was over. They
brought that
tank down there just to blow it to pieces
and that's
what they did. They had one tank down
there.
BY MR. MCBAIN:
Excuse me just one -- may I ask a
question?
You weren't
down there then from the period, let's
say, when
the camp opened until basically the time the
German POWs
were brought into this area? Were you
around then?
BY MR. CLARY SMITH:
No, sir, they moved us out of the
camp.
BY MR. MCBAIN:
They moved you out of the camp?
BY MR. CLARY SMITH:
We owned -- we owned 500-something
acres in the
camp and
they came in and took it away from us.
BY MR. MCBAIN:
So the time that you're talking about
with the
training was
after you had moved out of the camp?
BY MR. CLARY SMITH:
That's right.
BY MR. MCBAIN:
But before your family moved back in
---
BY MR. CLARY SMITH:
That's right.
BY MR. MCBAIN:
--- to the camp?
BY MR. CLARY SMITH:
That's right.
BY MR. MCBAIN:
Time frame, what time frame are we
talking
about?
BY MR. CLARY SMITH:
From '41 until -- when did we buy it
back --
'45.
BY MR. RUSSELL SMITH:
It's '47.
BY MR. CLARY SMITH:
It's somewhere in that area, '45,
'46, somewhere
in there.
BY MR. RUSSELL SMITH:
We lived down on ---
BY MR. CLARY SMITH:
We lived right on ---
BY MR. RUSSELL SMITH:
Dairy Ridge Road was named after my
father and
his father
and two other brothers, Dairy. That's
how
it got its
name. They took our dairy. My daddy went
to work and
tried to get them to stay out from down
there. They wouldn't listen to him.
BY MR. CLARY SMITH:
But I just -- we just have never
seen high
explosives.
BY MR. BAYUGA:
Again, it's called an armor piercing
round. It
would be
solid round just to penetrate the solid
steel.
BY MR. CLARY SMITH:
Yeah, that's right. That's what they were.
BY DR. KEITH:
If -- if -- just a stupid question,
but if they
hit a tank
or hit the ground and don't explode, are --
is it still
the possibility to explode that if it's --
I mean, is
this what you're saying?
BY MR. BAYUGA:
Well, there were several types of
rounds that
were used at
Camp Croft. You know, Mr. Smith is
asking about
the 37 millimeter. It's very possible
they shot
nothing but armor piercing rounds here, but
they also
shot high explosive mortars, the 105
projectiles,
you know, hand grenades.
There are several other types of
ordnance that
were used on
here, but it's very possible that for the
37
millimeter gun that was fired here, they only fired
the ---
BY DR. KEITH:
The solid?
BY MR. BAYUGA:
--- solid rounds.
BY MR. MCBAIN:
Another
crazy question, if I may? Do you have
any of the
ordnance records that came in to Croft
originally,
or do you know where they might be
obtained?
BY MR. BAYUGA:
The Archive Search Report ---
BY MR. MCBAIN:
Are you talking about the National
Archives in
Washington?
BY MS. BERRY:
Yes, sir.
BY MR. BAYUGA:
They were searched a couple years
ago, and I
don't recall
them identifying the ammunition that came
to Camp
Croft applied for the period of years training
the, you
know, the quarter of a million men who were
here, and,
you know, thousands and tons of ammunition
come here to
train soldiers.
They may have had some records at
the end of the
war where
they turned stuff back over to other active
installations
or they disposed of it on a demolition
range or
something like that, but I haven't seen those
records.
BY MR. MCBAIN:
Have you made any searches of the
Archives?
BY MR. BAYUGA:
No, we have another Corps of
Engineers District
does that
for us.
BY MS. BERRY:
St. Louis.
BY MR. BAYUGA:
St. Louis Corps of Engineers did
that for us.
BY MS. BERRY:
They have also got ---
BY MR. MCBAIN:
Excuse me. Excuse me for being a little bit
picky on the
answers, but is it the Engineers from the
St. Louis
District that are active hiring the
consultants
to go into the Archives to do the
searching?
BY MR. BAYUGA:
They actually go in themselves to do
that.
BY MR. MCBAIN:
I see.
BY MS. BERRY:
And we've also hired a contractor --
well,
actually the
one that prepared the EE/CA has gone in
and done a
Supplemental Archive Search Report.
BY MR. MCBAIN:
And they were hired out of the
Charleston
District,
correct?
BY MS. BERRY:
They were hired out of Huntsville.
BY MR. MCBAIN:
Huntsville District to Charleston,
but they
recognize
Charleston as the -- I talked to those
people, so
that's why I'm curious, and I've also
checked
ordnance records through library and other
places, and
there's some strange -- there's strange
situations
developing that just aren't explainable.
Let's put it
that way.
Do you -- is -- is the Corps there
-- do you
have any of
the original construction plans for the
camp?
BY MS. BERRY:
No, sir, I don't, not in Huntsville.
BY MR. MCBAIN:
Do you know where they might be
obtained? Would
they be out
of -- of the area of Rock Island?
BY MS. BERRY:
I can -- I'll check with the St.
Louis District
and see if
they have something. I know they
probably
have
something showing the cantonment area in that --
in the range
fans. I think they had something
regarding
the range fans, and I can check with them on
that.
BY MR. MCBAIN:
I appreciate that.
BY MS. BERRY:
Okay.
BY MR. MCBAIN:
I'll get with you ---
BY MS. BERRY:
Okay.
BY MR. MCBAIN:
--- at the end of the program.
BY MS. BERRY:
Okay.
BY MR. DAVID MULLINAX:
The next item on the agenda is new
Business.
Does anybody
have any new business for the Board or
from the
Board?
BY MR. OSBORNE:
I do.
BY MR. DAVID MULLINAX:
Mr. Osborne.
BY MR. OSBORNE:
With the Board's indulgence, I'd
like to take up
some items
on 00U3, and if you guys will get your
books out
and let's go over some of this stuff on Page
1.5, talking
about this is a private residential area
north of the
Park with the hand grenade practice
place, and
they proposed going down to certain depth
to make sure
that this is all taken care of.
My point is a letter that was
received by one of
the people
that live on Wedgewood Drive. From what
I
understand
in reading of the records and so forth,
there was
only four or five pieces of property where
that was
allowed to be tested on that area, and I
would like
to know from the Corps of Engineers what
about the
other property on Wedgewood Drive?
BY MS. BERRY:
On the follow on EE/CA, it shows
some additional
areas in
that on Wedgewood Drive that will be studied.
BY MR. OSBORNE:
Well, on the EE/CA Report on 8.2, we
have an
area on 003,
"Alternates, no further action,
government
buy backs, surface clearance or clearance
to
depth."
BY MS. BERRY:
Uh-huh (affirmative response).
BY MR. OSBORNE:
And they propose that they go down
to the
clearance to
the depth of it.
BY MS. BERRY:
Uh-huh (affirmative response).
BY MR. OSBORNE:
All right. And the next one would be -- unless
I lost my
place -- but the point is this letter stated
that last
year the Corps of Engineers completed
sampling
activities on Ms. Pike's property.
BY MS. BERRY:
Uh-huh (affirmative response).
BY MR. OSBORNE:
160 Wedgewood Drive.
BY MS. BERRY:
Uh-huh (affirmative response).
BY MR. OSBORNE:
"Found 15 practice or inert
hand grenades as a
result of
these findings. These ordnance items we
have
scheduled a crew to work on her property to
remove any
other items that may be buried below the
surface."
Now this is in a conflict with what
this one
says here. It says, "This crew is tentatively
scheduled to
start work around August '96." On
this
one it shows
it about February '97.
It says, "Crews will work in
the mornings with
magnetometers
to look for any potential ordnance
items. If anything is found, they will begin
removal
actions in
the afternoon. There is always a
potential
danger
involved in removing these items, therefore it
may be
necessary for the neighbors in the surrounding
area to
leave for a few hours in the afternoon so that
the crews
can continue their work."
My point is the person that received
this was
sort of
appalled at the letter and nothing explained
what was
going on and what's going to be going on.
It's sort of
vague. It's scary to a certain point,
and I think
that these people in this neighborhood
should have
a little bit more information instead of
just saying,
"If you're able to come, come to the
meeting
tonight or go down to the library and look
through the
information."
I think these people deserve more,
because
they're
living in this area and they have kids over
there and so
forth that the possibility they could be
killed or
whatever by picking up a hand grenade.
What I would like to know from the
Corps, what
are we going
to do?
BY MS. BERRY:
Well, we would have to get rights of
entry first
to get on
their property to look at it.
BY MR. OSBORNE:
All right. If we don't have right of entry and
something