to ensure a comprehensive and unified database. Approximately 10 percent of the
funds for defining fate and transport parameters will be contributed by the
Strategic Environmental Research and Development Program.
Scope of Project
This project was designed to develop techniques for assessing the potential
for environmental contamination from energetic materials on testing and training
ranges. Techniques will be developed to define the physical and chemical
properties, concentration, and distribution of energetics and residues of
energetics in soils, and the potential for transport of these materials to
groundwater. Other issues, such as offsite transport in surface runoff or as a
component of airborne dust, are also important, but are beyond the scope of the
project.
The study will be executed in the following two parts: range characterization
and fate and transport parameters for explosives residues. To characterize ranges,
heavy artillery impact and firing points and hand grenade ranges will be sampled.
Where possible, groundwater associated with the ranges will also be sampled.
Chemical residues from live fire or demolitions of specific rounds will be
assessed by detonations on snow cover. To fill data gaps in transport parameters,
such as dissolution kinetics and partitioning coefficients, laboratory scale batch
tests will be conducted.
Objectives
The primary objective of the study is to provide the Department of Defense
with techniques to assess the potential for groundwater contamination from
residues of high explosives (TNT, pentaerythritol tetranitrate (PETN), RDX, and
HMX) at testing and training ranges. Results of the project will facilitate
informed management decision making, minimize environmental impacts of
testing and training, and contribute to continued operation of ranges.
Specific objectives include the following:
a. Provide a unified database system that will include (1) a listing of the
energetic materials used in current and past munitions systems that are
known or expected to be present in UXO items on testing and training
ranges and whose use may have resulted in diffuse low-level
contamination of soils, and (2) a specific protocol that can be used to
determine the nature and extent of surface soil contamination around
impact areas to include the sampling strategy and analytical methods best
suited to this application.
b. Provide source term estimates for post-blast residues based on the extent
of surface soil contamination and the attributes of dissolution and release
to fate and transport processes.
5
Chapter 1 Introduction
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