Army headquarters in October issued a memo saying it concurred with a recommendation to implement, finally, the new rules with interim funding if necessary.

Inspectors also complained that early draft regulations "didn't include the key management controls needed to provide reasonable assurance that the Army was meeting the requirements stipulated in the DOD directives."

Inspectors say that at a minimum a checklist should be created for installations to follow to evaluate how well they do such things as:

• Prevent unauthorized access to DOD ranges, especially impact areas and other areas suspected of containing unexploded ordnance.

• Provide adequate training in explosives safety to individuals authorized access to DOD ranges before they are allowed access to them.

• Maintain permanent records of all military munitions expended, all unexploded ordnance clearance operations, and the coordinates of all areas known or suspected of containing unexploded ordnance.

Army headquarters also concurred with that recommendation, according to an Oct. 21 memo.

Of note, a recent Department of Defense inventory has identified 2,307 sites nationally that could contain unexploded ordnance. As of September 2002, it had cleaned up only 1 percent of them. The U.S. General Accounting Office has estimated it could take up to 300 years to clean all areas based on current funding levels.

In September 2001, the Environmental Protection Agency used military data to tally 126 incidents of civilians exposed to unexploded ordnance over the 83 previous years — producing at least 65 fatalities and 131 injuries.

In early days, the military did not always record exact impact areas — or even where it buried discarded stockpiles. Resulting problems range from contractors at Dugway once accidentally digging up old materials contaminated with mustard gas, to a housing development in Washington, D.C., finding old chemical arms buried there.

New directives are designed not only to prevent such problems in the future but to help ensure ranges can be sustained environmentally over the long term.

---

E-mail: lee@desnews.com