Contamination at arsenal site expected to last decades

Posted by egable on October 30th, 2007 filed in Superfund

Contamination at the Rocky Mountain Arsenal, where the U.S. Army produced chemical weapons during World War II, is expected to remain for decades beyond the scheduled 2010 completion of cleanup activities, according to a report released yesterday by the Colorado Attorney General John W. Suthers.

Although groundwater contamination has been reduced through cleanup efforts, the Natural Resource Damage Assessment Plan estimates that water in and around the arsenal may never be fully clean. Approximately 52,500 acre-feet of alluvial ground water is unusable for human consumption and about 1.89 million acre-feet of deep ground water is undrinkable, the report found.