The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers this summer will remove inactive explosives and munitions fragments from selected burial pits and trenches located in Crab Orchard National Wildlife Refuge under a remediation plan costing an estimated $306,000.

The Corps recommended recently the refuge sign a memorandum of agreement, allowing the Corps to clear ordinance and explosives from selected areas within a 418-acre plot three miles west of Illinois route 148, bordering the south-central shores of the Crab Orchard Lake.

Steve Nussbaum, remedial project manager with the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency in Springfield, said munitions are antiquated, but nonetheless should be removed from the area to prevent human injuries.

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There is a potential risk of exposure to an ordinance item, Nussbaum said. Detonation [of ordinance] might result if a person carried the item and mishandled it.

The corps evaluated the risk of death or injury from ordinance exposure to 1 in 2 million since the munitions are in pieces and not put together to explode.

Because no environmental regulations existed during World War II, manufacturers often burned defective ordinances, or bombs, then buried the remaining pieces, including the castings and fuses.

The area was placed on the Superfund National List in 1987. The Superfund is a national register of the U.S. EPA for severely contaminated and hazardous areas. There are more than 70,000 contaminated sites in the U.S. subject to claiming Superfund assistance.

Two areas were identified as sites requiring remediation. One of the areas, called Crab Orchard Plant No. 4, has been identified as a hazardous waste site, containing lead and other dangerous metals. The 260-acre COP-4 site, in the refuge’s wildlife sanctuary, was a former load and assembly area for munitions and explosives.

The hazardous waste will remain in the soil until the Corps of Engineers removes it beginning this summer. Two burial tanks were identified by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife in the COP area. The tanks were exposed to the soil underground and samples were taken and tested for cyanide, explosives and metal. The area was found to be clear of munitions.

Munitions were produced in an ordinance plant on the Refuge between 1942 and 1945 by the Department of Defense. The ordinance plant, which produced mines and bombs, operated on 22,000 acres of land. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service was designated as administrator of the land in 1947.

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The other area is named Crab Orchard Cemetery and was identified as a source for munitions removal by federal agencies, who began investigating the area in 1986 as a possible defense clean-up program site. Twenty-eight items of ordinance have been uncovered so far, and five percent of the ordinance is exposed to the surface.

Surface munitions come in the form of fragments of anti-tank mines and general purpose bombs discarded by the former producer.

Leanne Moore, a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service representative, provides consultation and oversight to other agencies involved in the remediation of public land. The IEPA, USEPA, ACE and USFWS are working together to ensure the project will be complete by fall.

The Illinois Ordinance Plant was just one industrial tenant during the World War II period, Moore said. There were others.

The plant manufactured approximately 44 million pieces of ordinance, and it is unknown how much was burned or buried. Ordinance and explosives are still manufactured and stored in Crab Orchard National Wildlife Refuge, by Primex Technologies and Olin Corp., an explosives manufacturer with an office in Carterville.