Army Searches Abandoned Training Grounds for Unused Ordnance
BILOXI, Miss. _ The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is combing the nation’s terrain for unused mortar rounds, bullets and grenades, and they’re searching abandoned World War II training grounds in South Mississippi.
Decommissioned military airfields and firing ranges are the focus of an ongoing U.S. Department of Defense program to remove ordnance, as well as locate any contamination from fuels, oils and chemical weapons, which could pose a threat to the public or damage the environment.
Officials estimate the number of abandoned World War II-era U.S. military facilities is well over 1,000, but the current round of the project is aimed at about 260 sites across the U.S. Mississippi has nearly 30 on the list, with six in South Mississippi.
Future rounds of the program could encompass the remainder of the training sites and airfields that sprang up during the military personnel blitz in the later years of World War II. Most of those installations were decommissioned by 1950, and many of the munitions and chemicals were hastily buried.
“Unfortunately, when they left, they just left as quickly as they could,” said Mike McKown, of the Corps of Engineers Mobile office, which is handling the work in Mississippi.
Under the program, Corps of Engineers inspectors walk the sites, take soil and ground water samples, and in some cases, mortar rounds and grenades are exploded in the field. Some of the ranges were used for chemical warfare and inspectors sometimes find “duds” they must blow up.
The program does not include land the U.S. military still owns; rather, acres in private ownership are qualified. With a large number of tracts turned over to civilians, Pentagon officials decided to start the program after fears emerged that developments could be built over old military sites and residents could uncover ordnance and be hurt, McKown said. But none of those incidents have been reported here.
Based on the current assessments, which are still in the early stages, the South Mississippi sites don’t seem to pose much of a threat, McKown said. He said most are in rural areas or on farmland that has been tilled and inspectors believe most of the rounds already have been found. The bulk of the South Mississippi sites see little foot traffic.
The Army Airfield Poorman Flexible Gunnery Range, used for training soldiers with .50 caliber machine guns in the 1940s, is in the heart of the DeSoto National Forest about 12 miles north of Biloxi, just off Mississippi 15. It’s already been assessed, and Corps of Engineers inspectors found nothing to be concerned about, McKown said.
It’s a typical case for South Mississippi.
The site of the former Gulfport Army Airfield sprawls around the Gulfport-Biloxi International Airport and includes some of the current property the Air National Guard occupies off Hewes Avenue. Corps of Engineers inspectors have yet to finish evaluations there. But from the samples they have taken so far, inspectors haven’t seen anything to be concerned about, McKown said. Other sites in the area include property on Horn Island, and also sites near Camp Shelby that are no longer controlled by the military.
Corps officials have placed their reports on the Poorman Flexible Gunnery Range in the temporary library trailers on Maple Drive in Gulfport for the public to view, and they are seeking public comment from residents on the range.
McKown said the current round of the program, which is expected to take about five years to finish, could be expanded in 2011, if Congress appropriates the money.
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(c) 2007, The Sun Herald (Biloxi, Miss.).
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