WTOP recently reported on Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton’s request to the U.S. Department of the Interior for funding for investigation and clean-up of chemical weapons in Fort Totten Park.
I reached out to her office, and they provided a copy of the letter.
Congresswoman Norton Letter to DOI (January 2025).
The letter states:
As the administration develops the fiscal year 2026 budget, I request that the budget include funding for the National Park Service (NPS), working together with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), to conduct a comprehensive investigation of Fort Totten Park in the District of Columbia for munitions and any environmental damage resulting from such munitions. On November 9, 2023, the agencies announced publicly they were seeking such funding.
In 2020, an unexploded ordnance was discovered in Fort Totten Park. I was assured by NPS that it had conducted a thorough investigation for additional munitions. On April 18, 2023, however, two metal canisters, which NPS described as “WWI-era military munitions,” were discovered in a different location in Fort Totten Park. The area where the canisters were found has been fenced off for the safety of residents.
In 2014, contaminated soil in Fort Totten Park was confirmed to have been brought to the park from the Spring Valley Formerly Used Defense Site (FUDS). The USACE is currently remediating the Spring Valley FUDS. A similar investigation and cleanup are needed at Fort Totten.
Back in 2017, one of our ANC meeting recaps noted that the National Park Service (NPS) contacted ANC 5A about possible contamination on the west side of the park where parkland was used for staging for construction of the green line. Fast forward to July 2020 when workers preparing to construct a pedestrian trail on the east side of the park encountered an unexploded WWI ordnance. NPS halted construction on the trail. Then in an update in December 2020, we noted that there might be a connection between the belated discovery of potential contamination on the west side of the park in 2017 and the discovery of the ordnance on the east side of the park in 2020. Even back in 2017, we noted that we were concerned that NPS did not have a good sense of the scope of the possible contamination and that became even more true in 2020. It was clear that their interpretation of impacted area was quite narrow.
Elected officials at every level shrugged. Resident inquiries at NPS townhalls hosted by Congresswoman Norton’s office and emails to her office were ignored. Media picked up the story in 2022 and elected officials finally started to pay attention.
In 2023, the ANC commissioner for that area, Zachary Ammerman, created a timeline of events on his website. He later resigned in the middle of the term, but he served long enough to get the ANC to pass a resolution requesting comprehensive soil testing in the park. The most Congresswoman Norton’s office did was write the occasional letter about a clean-up and answer resident inquiries with an insistence that nothing could be done about getting funding.
Fast forward to mid-2023, I had a call with a staffer in Congresswoman Norton’s office and I noted the lack of communication, lack of information, lack of a plan, lack of anyone asking Metro for an accounting, and a general lack of urgency to do anything at all besides write the same one paragraph letter to NPS and the Army Corps of Engineers over and over. That staffer ended up leaving, and it was crickets again. So, I reached back out to Congresswoman Norton’s office in September 2024 because it is truly ridiculous that every elected official at every level continues to ignore this issue and shrug and tell residents there is nothing more to be done.
So it is nice to see Congresswoman finally ask for funding. It would be amazing to have the city’s elected officials support that request. Elected officials in this city really really need to do a better job of working with federal partners to address issues across the city. I know they can because they did it downtown and they’re doing it now to get a football stadium at RFK.
Anyways, in the middle of all of this, Metro still manages to escape any accounting for its contractors’ actions in the park.
Next Stop...Riggs Park 