Experts map Camp Beale
for unexploded ordnance
Sac Bee excloo
CAMP FAR WEST (YSN) 8/5/02 -- Ordnance experts finished mapping Monday two sections of a 100-square mile area of old Camp Beale where forgotten World War II ammunition could threaten home builders in one of the fastest growing areas of Yuba County.
The last three-man mapping team included a scout followed by two men. One shouldered a geophysical positioning system. The other backpacked a recording device and pulled a rubber-tired cart on which was mounted a sophisticated sensor plate able to detect metal objects four feet and deeper in the ground.
Linked together, the team trudged sweatily over rocky ground and through knee-high star thistle on the last lap of a four-month survey of buried ordnance around Camp Far West and Big Oak Valley.
Underground maps created in the survey will be analyzed to determine roughly how much ordnance might be buried there, where it is and how best to clean it up.
Initial estimates indicated the project could cost $200 million and take up to 20 years. Actual removal of any ancient mortars, bombs, mines, grenades, or rockets is not expected to start until 2004, Project Manager Karol Ward said.
During WWII, Camp Beale was a 87,000-acres training base for 40,000 recruits in armored combat units learning to fight with and against tanks and fortified positions, said Arthur R. Smith, an ordnance safety expert with the Corps of Engineers.
Camp Beale was also a bombing range for the Army, Air Force and Navy, Smith said.
"Anything that could be dropped, fired or placed is out there," Smith said.
Between 1958 and 1963, the Department of Defense sold off some 64,000 acres of the original Camp Beale. Some went to the state for the Spenceville Wildlife Refuge. The rest went to ranchers and developers.
Before handing the land over, the military cleared away the surface detritus from the massive training operations - shrapnel, bomb shards, metal scraps - and destroyed any unexpended ordnance found lying on the ground.
However, whatever was buried, was left behind, including explosive devices that might still be armed and dangerous to anyone who touched them, Smith said.
Time does not disarm bombs, according to Theodore H. Asch, a Corps geophysicist working on the Beale project. Only two years ago clean-up workers in St. Louis. Mo. found a cache of Civil War cannonballs still ready to go off, Asch noted.
Some of the weaponry can drift to the surface through natural erosion, according to Tim Smith, a rancher who runs cattle on 600 acres of former Camp Beale land.
"Two years ago a Vietnam veteran found a 105mm rocket near a creek on our property. He knew what it was and that it was dangerous. We called Beale. They came out and took it away," Tim Smith said.
Such discoveries occur relatively infrequently, and as long as the ordnance remains buried, there it poses little problem, project officials reported.
However, the still-buried explosives have become an increasing concern as developers subdivide the properties and more and more new homebuilders move in, digging wells, septic tanks and sewer lines.
According to local real estate agent Dan Logue, there are about 1,200 homes in the Camp Far West area - by far the larger of two areas the military has marked out for priority clean up.
"Camp Far West is one of the fastest growing areas in Yuba County. The main restriction has been the lack of water. But it's on the Roseville-Wheatland corridor and they're coming," Logue said.
The "Former Camp Beale Restoration Project" was launched about two years ago, with the establishment of a 17-member Restoration Advisory Board made up of federal, state and county representatives and area property owners, large and small.
RAB's role was to alert the public in Yuba, Nevada and Placer counties to the need for a clean-up and to field questions from property owners, some of whom have been reluctant to participate in the project for fear the results might reduce property values.
It seems that, in the course of subdividing, the warnings and restrictions which appeared on the original deeds of sale apparently "fell off the deeds," according to safety expert Arthur Smith.
While this may have happened in some cases, local real estate agents must provide a disclosure form to prospective buyers indicating there might be "problems" with any properties within one mile of Beale Air Force Base, said Gwen McCoy, president of the Sutter-Yuba Association of Realtors.
Two telephone numbers where buyers may call the Corps of Engineers for information on the ordnance issue are provided on the form, McCoy said.
for unexploded ordnance
Sac Bee excloo
CAMP FAR WEST (YSN) 8/5/02 -- Ordnance experts finished mapping Monday two sections of a 100-square mile area of old Camp Beale where forgotten World War II ammunition could threaten home builders in one of the fastest growing areas of Yuba County.
The last three-man mapping team included a scout followed by two men. One shouldered a geophysical positioning system. The other backpacked a recording device and pulled a rubber-tired cart on which was mounted a sophisticated sensor plate able to detect metal objects four feet and deeper in the ground.
Linked together, the team trudged sweatily over rocky ground and through knee-high star thistle on the last lap of a four-month survey of buried ordnance around Camp Far West and Big Oak Valley.
Underground maps created in the survey will be analyzed to determine roughly how much ordnance might be buried there, where it is and how best to clean it up.
Initial estimates indicated the project could cost $200 million and take up to 20 years. Actual removal of any ancient mortars, bombs, mines, grenades, or rockets is not expected to start until 2004, Project Manager Karol Ward said.
During WWII, Camp Beale was a 87,000-acres training base for 40,000 recruits in armored combat units learning to fight with and against tanks and fortified positions, said Arthur R. Smith, an ordnance safety expert with the Corps of Engineers.
Camp Beale was also a bombing range for the Army, Air Force and Navy, Smith said.
"Anything that could be dropped, fired or placed is out there," Smith said.
Between 1958 and 1963, the Department of Defense sold off some 64,000 acres of the original Camp Beale. Some went to the state for the Spenceville Wildlife Refuge. The rest went to ranchers and developers.
Before handing the land over, the military cleared away the surface detritus from the massive training operations - shrapnel, bomb shards, metal scraps - and destroyed any unexpended ordnance found lying on the ground.
However, whatever was buried, was left behind, including explosive devices that might still be armed and dangerous to anyone who touched them, Smith said.
Time does not disarm bombs, according to Theodore H. Asch, a Corps geophysicist working on the Beale project. Only two years ago clean-up workers in St. Louis. Mo. found a cache of Civil War cannonballs still ready to go off, Asch noted.
Some of the weaponry can drift to the surface through natural erosion, according to Tim Smith, a rancher who runs cattle on 600 acres of former Camp Beale land.
"Two years ago a Vietnam veteran found a 105mm rocket near a creek on our property. He knew what it was and that it was dangerous. We called Beale. They came out and took it away," Tim Smith said.
Such discoveries occur relatively infrequently, and as long as the ordnance remains buried, there it poses little problem, project officials reported.
However, the still-buried explosives have become an increasing concern as developers subdivide the properties and more and more new homebuilders move in, digging wells, septic tanks and sewer lines.
According to local real estate agent Dan Logue, there are about 1,200 homes in the Camp Far West area - by far the larger of two areas the military has marked out for priority clean up.
"Camp Far West is one of the fastest growing areas in Yuba County. The main restriction has been the lack of water. But it's on the Roseville-Wheatland corridor and they're coming," Logue said.
The "Former Camp Beale Restoration Project" was launched about two years ago, with the establishment of a 17-member Restoration Advisory Board made up of federal, state and county representatives and area property owners, large and small.
RAB's role was to alert the public in Yuba, Nevada and Placer counties to the need for a clean-up and to field questions from property owners, some of whom have been reluctant to participate in the project for fear the results might reduce property values.
It seems that, in the course of subdividing, the warnings and restrictions which appeared on the original deeds of sale apparently "fell off the deeds," according to safety expert Arthur Smith.
While this may have happened in some cases, local real estate agents must provide a disclosure form to prospective buyers indicating there might be "problems" with any properties within one mile of Beale Air Force Base, said Gwen McCoy, president of the Sutter-Yuba Association of Realtors.
Two telephone numbers where buyers may call the Corps of Engineers for information on the ordnance issue are provided on the form, McCoy said.
<< Home