Courtesy Red Cliff Band of Lake Superior Chippewa/Environmental
Department
Pulling up the barrels from Lake Superior will be tricky,
requiring special equipment and working to keep the rusting
barrels intact.
The mystery of more than 1,450 55-gallon barrels dumped into
Lake Superior between 1959 and 1962 by the U.S. Army should be
less of a mystery after an effort headed by the Red Cliff Band
of Lake Superior Chippewa to raise 70 of those barrels to review
their contents and condition.
The band’s Environmental Department, working with the private
environmental services company EMR Inc., is recovering the
barrels within the 96-square-mile area located one to three
miles offshore between Duluth and Knife River, Minnesota, in
areas previously identified by sonar scans and submersible
vehicles. The barrels lay 130 to 400 feet under the surface and
are within at least 1.5 miles of the drinking-water intake
system for Duluth and Superior, Wisconsin.
“Results of this investigation will be used to determine if
the barrel contents pose any potential threat to area residents,
tribes, fisheries, aquatic life or the environment,” the Red
Cliff Band said in a statement. “The primary goal is to
determine if further investigation or remediation is required.”
Because the drums potentially could include live munitions or
other hazards, the U.S. Coast Guard has established a 700-foot
safety zone around the tug Champion and barge
Kokosing until August 20, while the recovery is in
progress.
The tribe is
blogging about the barrel recovery, said Melonee Montano,
director of the tribe’s Environmental Department. One of the
most recent entries: “Despite minor weather and
operating delays, the project is proceeding safely, and
sediment, lake water, and barrel contents are being sampled
daily and shipped for laboratory analysis.” It proclaimed the
work done in its most recent entry, August 15, and said data
would not be available for several weeks.
This map shows the approximate locations of the barrels
dumped into Lake Superior by the U.S. Army from 1959 to
1962. (Courtesy Minnesota Pollution Control Agency)
The barrels and their content have been controversies since
the late 1960s, when commercial fishermen accidentally netted
700-pound drums containing “metal parts resembling buckshot” and
dumped them back into the water, according to the
Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA). In its
investigation the MPCA found that the barrels came from the Twin
Cities Army Ammunitions Plant, connected to classified
production by Honeywell Corporation of anti-personnel grenades
and mines. During this Cold War period, the army chose dumping
of the barrels into Lake Superior by the U.S. Army Corps of
Engineers as the cheapest, most secure alternative for disposal.
In the mid-1970s there were failed attempts by hard-hat
divers to locate and recover the barrels. About a decade later,
amendments to the federal Superfund law and a request from the
MPCA prompted the Corps to reevaluate barrel recovery. In the
intervening years, seven barrels were recovered and contained
mainly “ash and slag,” said Ron Swenson, an MPCA municipal
division supervisor. At least 17 contaminants were identified,
including polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs); benzene, acetone,
arsenic and lead. “Based on current data and information, the
MPCA does not believe that the barrels present a threat to human
health or the environment,” the agency reported. The cost of
removing all the barrels and the potential for releasing
contaminants halted the project.
Interest for the Red Cliff Band came first from individual
activists, according to written responses from Montano, who is
overseeing the recovery activity. “The project first began with
a few extremely active Red Cliff tribal environmental activists
including Walt Bresette, Jeanne Buffalo-Reyes and Judy Pratt
Shelly, who were at the time following several other similar
areas of concern including the DuPont Site in Washburn and
Project ELF near Clam Lake, Wisconsin,” he wrote in an e-mail to
ICTMN. (The DuPont property was contaminated by an explosives
manufacturer, and Project ELF was a controversial Navy
extremely-low-frequency radio communications site.)
One controversy around the barrels is whether they contain
radioactive materials. A Geiger counter on a sub involved in a
1990 recovery attempt was reported to have begun clicking 30
feet from the bottom of the lake, but stopped when it reached
bottom. Subsequent radiation testing with Geiger counters and a
more sensitive gamma-ray detector did not indicate high levels
of radioactive materials in the barrels, according to the MPCA.
However, an environmental activist group called
NukeWatch contends radioactive materials “mostly likely” are
present and believes that there is an attempt to conceal the
more dangerous health and environmental risks posed by the
barrels.
The testing by
Red Cliff’s Barrel Recovery Project is intended to clear up
some of the mystery.
“The barrel contents will be tested, as well as sediment and
water from outside of the barrels,” Montano reported. “All
samples will be tested for VOCs (volatile organic compounds),
PAHs (polynuclear aromatic hydrocarbons), explosives, metals and
PCBs. Although we do not expect to find radiation, if levels are
detected that are two times the level of background radiation,
the samples will be tested for uranium and thorium. The
parameters that are being tested are based on similar types of
tests conducted on the barrels in the past, however our tests
will be consistent across the entire sample population. We are
also sampling a much larger percentage of the barrels than
previous studies.”
The barrels are along the Minnesota shoreline of Lake
Superior and not the Wisconsin shore, where the Red Cliff
reservation is located, but the dump sites are within
territories ceded by the Lake Superior Chippewa. Because of
that, Red Cliff was able to get federal grants of more than $3
million to apply toward recovery and testing of the barrels
under the U.S. Department of Defense’s Native American Lands
Environmental Mitigation program.
“In 1996 the Department of Defense began a program aimed
specifically at addressing the effects of past military
operations on Indian lands,” Montano reported. “Due to the
barrels site being of most concern and lying within our Ceded
territory, we applied for and receiving funding for our first
Cooperative Agreement under this program in 2004. The
application and procurement of funding was about a
six-month-long process. Since that time we have successfully had
a continuous project funded under six cooperative agreements.”
The barrels themselves are in varying degrees of degradation,
some rusting and exposing the concrete within them, making the
recovery more delicate so as to keep from spreading
contamination.
“The most difficult aspect has been to plan for all of the
possible conditions we may encounter in the field,” Montano
reported. “This type of recovery has never been conducted
before, so we had no models to help us plan our operations. The
contents of the barrels are unknown and the condition of the
barrels is uncertain, therefore, we had to plan for a variety of
contingencies.”
Tackling such a large project has been a challenge. “In
regards to management, the most difficult aspect has been having
little staff in our Environmental Department, which have various
programs and grants to administer and the barrels project is
only one of them. It requires a great deal of time and attention
due to it being on such a large scale in terms of importance,
funding and all of its aspects,” Montano said.
NukeWatch has alleged that nearly 500 barrels near the Knife
River are being ignored in the recovery and has started an
online petition to call for recovery of those specific barrels
by the Army Corps of Engineers. In response to “insinuations
that the tribe is ignoring potential barrel dump sites under
pressure of federal agencies,” Red Cliff’s July 31 blog stated,
“This insinuation is not only false but contrary to our culture
and values. For countless generations the Chippewa people have
depended on Lake Superior for resources. The Lake is central to
our beliefs, and the Red Cliff Band believes that the protection
of this sacred body of water is our responsibility, not just for
the sake of the Tribe, but for all people who have the privilege
of living near Lake Superior and for future generations.”
Now that the 70 barrels have been recovered, the next step is
testing the materials within them, something that should be done
by spring, Montano estimated. Once the contents have been
determined, “The tribe will host public stakeholder meetings to
discuss the results and will make a determination based on input
from others (specifically Tribes) as to how to proceed.”
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