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7.30.08
Corp says well field concerns unfounded
By Eric Olson, Associated Press, printed in the Lincoln Journal Star
OMAHA — An official for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers says concerns about M.U.D.’s new well field pumping hazardous materials into the Omaha area’s drinking water are unfounded.
State Sen. Don Preister of Bellevue and members of a citizen advisory board held a news conference Wednesday where they implored the corps to stop the scheduled Oct. 1 opening of Metropolitan Utilities District’s Platte West water plant.
The well field is 2½ miles east of the 17,000-acre Mead Superfund site that contains contaminants remaining from the days a munitions production plant operated there in the 1940s and 1950s.
The corps issued a permit to M.U.D. in 2003 with the assumption that contamination at the Superfund site was contained.
Preister pointed out that a corps study last year showed that contamination had spread to within two miles west of the new well field. He said further study is necessary to determine the full scope of the contamination. The concern, he said, is that the M.U.D. plant could pull in hazardous materials that can’t be filtered through water treatment.
But Rodney Schwartz, the corps’ senior project manager who handled the M.U.D. permit, said the tainted Mead groundwater and the area nearby that the contaminants spread to are both downhill from the M.U.D. well field.
At the rate M.U.D. is allowed to pump, Schwartz said, it would be impossible for the contaminated water to reach the plant.
Schwartz said safeguards will be in place to monitor water safety in the well field.
M.U.D. spokeswoman Mari Matulka said the utility sees no reason to delay opening the plant.
“The Corps will continue to monitor what’s going on,” Matulka said. “They’ll let us know if there are any problems. And if there are, they will be corrected.”
The EPA in 1990 began overseeing cleanup the Superfund site a half-mile south of Mead. The Kansas City office of the Corps is in charge of that project, though the Omaha district issued the permit to M.U.D..
The Nebraska Ordnance Plant operated there as a munitions production plant during World War II and the Korean War. The plant was also used by the Army for munitions storage and ammonium nitrate production. The Air Force built and maintained three Atlas missile silos at the facility from 1959 to 1964.
Two contaminants found at the Superfund site — Royal Demolition Explosive (RDX) and trichloroethylene (TCE) — are of particular concern, said Lynn Moorer, a member of the Restoration Advisory Board.
RDX, a powder used in the making of explosives, and TCE, a solvent, are linked to a variety of health problems, according to the federal government’s Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry.
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