Army agencies ensure strong stewardship of JBER ranges

  • Published
  • By Airman 1st Class Omari Bernard
  • JBER Public Affairs
JOINT BASE ELMENDORF-RICHARDSON, Alaska --  Soft sounds echoed throughout the woods surrounding the Eagle River Flats Impact Area on Feb. 19. The sun hung behind a curtain of low hanging clouds and the snow littering the ground muffled the sound of people walking on the surface of a frozen lake seemingly in the middle of nowhere. It was cold and gloomy, miserable conditions for a walk, but for Mike Walsh the conditions could not have been possibly be any more perfect.

Walsh is a research mechanical engineer with the Army Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory located in Hanover, N.H. He and his team conducted initial insensitive munitions tests in controlled areas surrounding the ERF.

"These tests are conducted for the Department of the Army," Walsh said. "We are looking into the newer, insensitive munitions that are used to prevent accidental detonations in vehicles or in an ammo supply point."

Their objective: to determine the effect of residues leftover from the detonation of munitions have on the environment.

No one from CRREL has tested the effects of insensitive rounds since the previous investigation on JBER-Richardson with white phosphorous contamination on the migratory and local waterfowl population in the wetland areas of the ERF. During that time, it was discovered previous munitions containing white phosphorous, a manmade material, was having a direct impact on the environment surrounding the ERF.

An archived record by the US National Library of Medicine National Institutes of Health from 1993 (www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1474672) provides proof of why CRRELs research is important, "1,000 to 2,000 waterfowl including ducks, geese, and swans died yearly from ingestion of white phosphorous residue that small particles of the highly toxic, incendiary munition P4 stored in the bottom anoxic sediments of shallow salt marsh ponds."

The Army first discovered the problem in 1993 and ongoing remediation efforts began in 1995.

This was a major concern years ago, Walsh explained. "Not so much with newer rounds, because they have not directly impacted the area yet."

Walsh explained the scientific method used to conduct the insensitive munitions test.
"First we find out what the Army has in inventory or what is coming up in inventory," Walsh said. "These are the rounds that we want to look at, the most commonly used rounds. 60-mm and 80-mm mortar rounds are obviously used quite often, up to 105-mm howitzer rounds."

"Then we look at what's inside the round," Walsh said. "If it's something different that we haven't tested before we'll try to get a hold of those rounds either through ammo supply on base or through army tests and evaluations command. We'll get them up here, get them in ammo supply, coordinate with the explosive ordnance disposal guys and then do the tests."

Each 60-mm mortar used in the test was carried out to the test site by explosive ordnance disposal members garbed in body armor and helmets from the 716th Explosive Ordnance Disposal Company. Each mortar was placed on a block of ice where a blast cap was attached to each in preparation for a high order detonation.
"These guys are great, obviously the Army is not going to hand over several dozen mortar rounds without supervision," Walsh said. "They wire it up for us, set them off for us in the areas that we want to do the test. They handle the set up and blowing up part and we handle the sampling whenever they're done."

After the charges were set and a wireless receiver was completed, EOD moved to a safe location away and then detonated the charge from cover. The clean snow surface around the detonation was littered with black residue around a small crater of ice where the mortar was detonated.

"When you blow a round up," Walsh said. "You end up with an area that's discolored, blackish colored, it's the nature of the explosion you get. We call it soot."

A plume of soot was outlined in the snow. From there, CRREL collected samples of the plume by taking multi-increment samples of 100 scoops.

"We put them in a bag," Walsh explained. "We bring that bag back to our lab here on JBER-R, where we melt it, filter out the solids, and then concentrate the liquids. We then send the solids and liquids to the lab in Hanover, N.H.

At the lab, CRREL uses liquid chromatography to analyze concentrations.

"From there, we back calculate how many increments we took and how big the sample we had," Walsh said. "Then calculate how much residue we get for each round, we know how much of each compound is in the round so then we can do an efficiency estimation. It sounds like a complicated process, but really it's pretty straightforward, especially since we get to test on clean snow."

According to Walsh, Alaska winters are the ideal climate for conducting tests on residue left from explosives.

"We do our testing here in the winter," he said. "We have essentially a brand new impact area every year, because in the winter the water comes in and floods the area. It isolates the surface every year from the past 50 to 60 years of activity on the Eagle River Flats. So there is no influence of anything that has been fired before. We know where the incoming rounds have been fired this winter because you can obviously see where those land out here and we have this nice clean snow surface."

"It is hard to determine what's good and what's bad. We did run some tests a while back that show that certain rounds could not be used period. It affected over $100 million worth of munitions. It also prevented a tremendous environmental cleanup liability and perhaps a number of base closures. Whether that's good or bad, depends on which end you're looking at.

"To us it is a good result," Walsh continued. "We looked at something that had the potential of contaminating, we found that it did have a very high potential and the Army caught it in time and immediately acted on it, so that was a very good outcome."

The engineers from CRREL did not anticipate anything drastic from newer rounds fired Feb. 19. According to Walsh tests conducted by CRREL are beneficial to both the environment and the Army.

"It has to do with range sustainability," he explained. "If you end up with too much of these compounds on the range it can get in the ground water and cause problems, the area here is sensitive because of local and migratory wildlife. The whole idea is to keep it as clean as we can to enable the Soldiers to use it for training."

"The land the Army is using is owned by people of the United States," Walsh said. "They need to be good stewards of the land. This test is part of the process of being a good steward and you're also ensuring that you're able to maintain and use these training ranges that are so vital to the Soldiers. If you're not careful with the environment you run the risk of losing your ranges."