Let’s see if this makes sense to you: The Army Corps of Engineers wants to dispose of bombs that could be considered weapons of mass destruction behind Sibley Memorial Hospital, on federal land close to the Dalecarlia Reservoir, which supplies drinking water to D.C. and parts of Northern Virginia.
This is a fictional scenario, right? The Army wouldn’t destroy bombs behind a hospital, near a reservoir, in the midst of Spring Valley, one of D.C.’s most elite neighborhoods?
No joke.
A bit of background: In 1917, the Army had experimented with toxic chemicals at American University. It was seeking a game changer in World War I’s stalemated trench warfare in Europe. It blew up bombs in the fields and forests around the campus. For decades, as the fields were carved into streets with stately homes, the former use stayed a secret, and toxic chemicals stayed buried. In 1993, construction workers bulldozed up bombs. The corps has been digging up weapons pits and cleaning gardens for 16 years.
The corps reported it had discovered three chemicals: arsine, a lethal gas made from arsenic; mustard gas, the blistering agent that armies would hurl at one another in 1917; and lewisite, another arsenic compound dubbed “the dew of death,” because one drop was thought to be lethal.
Now the Army wants to dispose of the lethal bombs in a “secure facility” behind Sibley.
Not, says Kent Slewinski.
“Why hasn’t the Army Corps been completely honest and transparent?” he asks. “Perhaps the munitions destruction process is not as safe as they would like us to believe.”
Slewinski is the quintessential homegrown activist. He grew up in Spring Valley. He worked as a landscape contractor for years. In the late 1990s, he started suffering from numbness and memory loss. It was around the time the Army started digging up bombs. The diagnosis was neuropathy, which could have been caused by the toxic chemicals.
Since then, Slewinski, 53, has been a leading activist in a saga that has split Spring Valley. Some residents want to ignore the toxics and protect their property values; others want answers to two questions: Are there more bombs? What are the health effects?
The question of health effects might get answered. Ward 3 Council member Mary Cheh has secured $250,000 toward such a study. Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton has promised to try and raise more funds.
But what of other toxic pits? What about disposing of the bombs now being stored behind Sibley? Both were to be on the table Tuesday night at a public meeting on the Army’s plan to dispose of the weapons behind Sibley.
Slewinski and ANC Commissioner Nan Wells will come armed with demands and questions. They want deeper investigations into the history and the land. They want a health study, which might lead to more chemicals. They are not sure they want the bombs blown up in the neighborhood.
“Why not hold off on destruction until they see if they find more munitions?” Slewinski asks. “They can destroy it all — at the Naval Research Lab.”
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