Bombs in Our Backyard

BOMBS
By Marisa Kendall
4/20/2009



The American University administration has failed to adequately inform students and the public about chemical weapons buried on campus after World War, the largest deposit of which may still be lying undetected, a documentary film maker said Thursday.
The U.S. military used AU’s campus as a chemical weapons testing site from 1917 to 1918. Recent excavations on lot 18 near the Public Safety building and on nearby Glenbrook Road have uncovered unexploded munitions and deposits of mustard gas, arsine and arsenic, the Eagle previously reported.
Ginny Durrin, a documentary film maker, screened her film, “Bombs in Our Backyard,” as a work-in-progress Thursday, March 19, in the Weschler Theater of Mary Graydon Center. Following the screening, which was sponsored by the Environmental Film Festival, several experts debated the film’s impact and the larger issue of munitions found in the area.
Though the Army Corps claims it has safely removed all hazardous material from AU and neighboring Spring Valley, Durrin said she believes the largest burial site may still be lying undetected underneath the AU campus. The soil surrounding the Kreeger and Watkins buildings has a high concentration of perchlorate, a component commonly found in explosives. This burial site may be the source of the contamination found in Spring Valley, Durrin said.
These locations also match up with WWI diagrams that depict a main burial site larger than the others, Durrin said.
“All of this is hypothesis, but I think it needs to be tested,” she said.
While AU’s administration is attempting to investigate and clean up the toxins using government grants, it has not given students and the public enough information on the situation, according to Durrin.
“I think AU is trying to correct the past quietly and slowly,” she said.
Tom Smith, the advisory neighborhood commissioner for Spring Valley, said that the problem is increasing government secrecy since 9/11. Items have been dug up in the grounds around the president’s house on campus, but officials will not inform the public of what has been found, Smith said.
“There’s a lack of transparency now which I think is very, very troubling,” he said.
Bethany Bridgham, senior associate general counsel in AU’s legal counsel office, said the university sent memos last December to individuals who attended classes or worked in areas near the dig. Nearby buildings included academic buildings Watkins and Kreeger, the Admissions Office and the Financial Aid Office. The memo instructed students to go into the nearest building and seal all doorways and windows in the event of a chemical emergency signaled by the school’s siren.
The university has also set up a Web site at http://american.edu/usace/ to keep students updated on the status of the investigations.
Durrin has been working on “Bombs in Our Backyard” for the past 16 years, following the story since a construction worker first discovered a shell during a 1993 construction project in Spring Valley.
The film juxtaposed shots of large houses and green, suburban lawns with residents’ stories of mysterious illnesses and frustration at not having answers. One resident said on camera that three people on her block got lung cancer even though they did not smoke. A team of construction workers who had dug a foundation in the area recalled seeing silver particles floating in the air and experiencing itching and vomiting during work.
Petruniak said he thinks the film should be used to raise awareness on a national level about the many other areas across the country affected by buried chemical weapons. It is unfair that there are many poor communities in the country dealing with problems similar to Spring Valley without the money and resources to do anything about it, he said.
Durrin said she hopes the film will keep society from forgetting what happened in Spring Valley. She also said she believes there is more to the story and urged AU students to question a variety of sources and try to piece the missing pieces of the puzzle.
“People should press to find out,” she said.
AU officials could not be reached for comments.
Mark Petruniak, a senior in the School of International Service, helped log and digitize footage for “Bombs in Our Backyard” while working for Durrin as an intern last summer.
“I think it’s something that [AU students] should be concerned about,” he said. “It’s certainly not safe.”

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