News & Articles

Demonstrators walked from Duluth’s drinking water intake on Scenic Hwy 61 to Leif Ericson Park on Lake Superior Day, July 2010. -- Nukewatch photo by Bonnie Urfer

The Duluth News Tribune’s recent update on the Army Corps of Engineers’ Lake Superior waste dumping scandal included the welcome acknowledgement that the secret program began in 1957, not in 1959 as it has repeatedly reported. The date is significant because, as the group Save Lake Superior has warned for decades, the Army Corps threw six heavy drums full of battery production-related chemicals into the great lake in 1957 for reasons that have never been explained.

The DNT report notes that Honeywell, which made the waste, and the Army have claimed that their 1,457 barrels held harmless grenade parts and that they were dumped into drinking water to keep the grenade’s design a secret from the Soviets. Not only were the contents of the barrels revealed to be highly toxic, but the “national security” pretext for the dumping appears bogus since unexploded grenades used at the time by the Pentagon worldwide could easily have been acquired by the Russians. Honeywell, which dumped radioactive waste illegally in Pine County also claimed for years that it didn’t work with radioactive materials during the dumping era — another assurance which was completely false.

We now know that at least 17 hazardous chemical toxins were found in seven barrels recovered in 1994. MPCA documentation — and news reports at the time — show-up the error in the DNT’s Jan. 6 statement that MPCA officials thought the quantities of toxins were “too low to be considered an environmental or human health threat or even hazardous waste.”

The MPCA’s “results table” of Sept. 19, 1994 lists the concentrations of benzene, cadmium, lead, arsenic, acetone, chromium and PCBs, etc. that were found. The PCB contamination was 14,750 times the Minnesota Department of Health’s recommended limit in drinking water (590 parts-per-billion, against the state limit of .04 ppb). Lead was found at 220 times the recommended limit.

The DNT reported on Sept. 22, 1994 that the MPCA’s Bob Swenson said, “I guess we’re most surprised about the PCBs … What this means in the long-term for public health, for the lake’s ecosystem … for additional PCBs in fish, we still haven’t determined.” PCBs and the other toxics in the barrels proved Honeywell and the Army Corp to be lying, and moved even the blithe News Tribune to charge in November 1994 that PCA officials had for years been “either mistaken or untruthful.”

Not ‘rumors’ but Geiger
counter clicks and
federal documentation

The News Tribune’s Jan. 6 reference to “persistent rumors” that the barrels contain radioactive waste is obfuscatory, condescending and dishonest. It is no rumor that the U.S. EPA reported radiation being emitted from four drums on Nov. 27, 1990. It is no rumor that Harold Maynard’s Geiger counters were clicking like mad in 1990

It is no rumor that the Argonne National Laboratory’s February 1998 report on the Twin Cities Army Ammunition Plant — the source of the barrels — cites a 1955 document titled: “Radiation Data and Lake Superior Rad Dumping.”

The DNT’s Jan. 6 report includes a reassuring statement of fact which is highly misleading. “Underwater testing devices used by the EPA in 1995, however, showed no sign of elevated radioactivity around the underwater barrels, and no evidence had turned up in any of the barrels recovered up to that point.” While true, this nuanced sentence dis-informs readers because the 1995 survey did not examine “the underwater barrels” but only 24 of them. Further, the 1995 scanning did not negate or even address the EPA’s 1990 discovery of elevated amounts of gamma radiation being emitted by four barrels.

That 1990 analysis by the EPA’s Mark Semler says, “Drums 33, 37, and 38 had marginally elevated gamma exposure rates,” and “Drum 11 had slightly elevated gamma levels.” Mr. Semler’s cover letter to his report warns, “Because the underwater probe is insensitive to alpha or beta radiation, no conclusions concerning the presence of radionuclides which are pure alpha or beta emitters can be made.” It’s fair to dub the EPA’s 1995 follow-up review a “drive-by” and a whitewash, especially since it too scanned only for gamma radiation in spite of Semler’s advice.

Additionally, submarine operator Harold Maynard said in his Oct. 27, 1990 sworn affidavit, and in an April 1995 interview with Duluth’s KBJR television — and insists to this day — that both his onboard Geiger counters registered radiation near one of the barrels he surveyed. That gamma radiation passed through the steel barrel wall and through Maynard’s submarine’s hull. Captain Maynard, now retired, told me that Army Corps officers in charge of his underwater exploration would now allow him to return to the same area to confirm his radiation finding.

Cpt. Maynard replied to the MPCA’s 1994 conclusion that “We don’t believe there’s any short-term threat to human health.” The captain said “…now one of us is a liar, and I’ve got no reason to lie.”

— John LaForge is on the staff of Nukewatch, a nuclear watchdog group in Wisconsin, which this month will publish an updated special report “Drinking Water at Risk: Toxic Military Wastes Haunt Lake Superior.”