Photo from a February 4, 1998 report by Human Factors Applications Incorporated (HFA) to the U.S. Army Corps of engineers. Surveyers are using metal detectors to search for possible amunition and the red flags are sites where metal was detected under ground at Fort Totten.

The question is how extensive a sweep for old – and possibly live – bullets, shells and other amunition do you do on a Fort that has been a military base for over 150 years before you dig new foundations into the ground.

The Federal government’s answer has been that you dig just four feet in some cases and one civilan observer as well as the city of New York tend to disagree.

For three years, Lawrence Ordine has served as the chairman of the civilian committee observing the Army’s environmental investigation at Fort Totten (the Restoration Advisory Board or RAB). He has waded through looseleafs full of initial findings, verbal historical accounts, and a mountain of meeting educating himself on every aspect of the environment of Fort Totten. And now, "my concerns for the environmental condition of the Fort are more troubling than ever," he explained in an exclusive statement to the Queens Tribune.

"In what is literally a potentially explosive situation, the search for unexploded munitions on the base was conducted in a manner which renders the results useless. Metal detectors were used on only a small portion of the base and a statistical sample of the ‘magnetic hits’ were dug up. Since the subsurface is a junkyard of discarded metal pieces, pipe, conduit, rails, wire, etc, the value of examining less than ten percent of the underground objects falls to near zero as the sheer number of junk hits overwhelms the statistics, he wrotes.

A photo from the February 1997 HFA report showing harmless metal dug up at "magnetic hits" sites.

It’s like using a magnet to find a needle in a haystack filled with nails," Ordine said, and New York City tends to agree with him.

According to Marcie Kesner, director of planning and development for Queens Borough President Claire Shulman, the city is "still in negotiations on additional testing" for unexploded munitions.

She confirmed that "the city would like more testing," however the federal government is maintaining that they have completed what was required of them by law.

Kesner added that the federal government has been "willing to entertain the discussion" of further testing, but has yet to make any agreements with the city. Tribune attempts to reach the Army Corps of Engineers officials overseeing the environmental cleanup were unsuccessful.

Meanwhile Ordine showed the Tribune pictures from official reports to the corps showing a sea of little red flags indicating some kind of metal below the surface as investigators scan the ground with detectors.

He says the study was done with detectors which could only find a twenty-four inch metal object to a depth of four feet. "The most common munitions stored at Totten in the last century were anti-aircraft shells shorter than two feet and which were shipped in and out of Totten in huge quantities during and after World War II."

Ordine is afraid that, construction or utility trench work — both presently anticipated — will go much deeper than the search limits. Any digging at the Fort, needed for the planned Esplanade, new water service or training facilities, should be proceeded by a ground penetrating radar search for the typically smaller munitions stored at Totten in recent decades. A shovel striking a forty millimeter anti-aircraft shell, grenade or rifle cartridge will make a powerful enough impression on an unlucky construction worker.

The Army’s ordinance study concerns itself with massive artillery shells which are frankly much harder to ‘lose.’"

Kesner added that although the city and the borough president are pushing for the federal government to do further testing, the city would also have to complete a City Environmental Quality Review (CEQR) and a Uniform Land Use Review Process (ULURP) that would identify and take care of any environmental issues at the fort.

She concluded that the city wants to "maximize our protection" but that if hazardous conditions arise down the road it is the federal government and the army which will "always be held responsible."

Ordine’s concerns as the chairman of the Fort Totten RAB include other environmental hazards as well.

"The Fire Department of New York City will take over the Administration of the Fort and move their Fire Training Academy from Randall’s Island to Totten. While such a tenant, well-heeled with education grants, solves the funding problems of maintaining the buildings and public areas, the proposed placement of the simulated fire training facility over an Army landfill may be anything from problematic to downright dangerous.

The Fire Department will erect mock buildings with controlled fires their trainees will extinguish. Plans call for removing the enlisted man’s housing built in 1959 on the east side of the fort to make way for this training ground.

The Fire Department, shown already in a Fort Totten building will be overseeing the future of the Fort once it is out of federal hands.

In my initial conversations with Fire officials, they were unaware this area sits directly over a landfill the Army operated from the 1920’s until 1958 to receive solid waste from the base’s primitive sewage treatment plant. Sewer sludge from their settling tank, along with anything else an army base would like to dispose of, was dumped in this trench and fill area for thirty years. All urban sludge contains high levels of toxic heavy metals including mercury, lead, and cadmium, but since the Fort’s workshops, laboratories and medical facilities were also on the sewer system, Fort Totten’s old sludge is particularly nasty," he wrote.

The advisor supervising the project and transfer of the land to the Fire Department was not available for comment on the situation by presstime. However, a spokesperson for the Queens borough president said the Fire Department’s proposals and a prosposal from the Eastern Paralyized Veterans have already been completed and submitted to the federal government. Park Department and historical building proposals are currently being drafted.

"Totten’s large fleet of vehicles and military equipment, maintenance shops, ammunition storage and general operations produced large quantities of toxic solvents, contaminated lubricants, paint, thinners, etc. No accurate records have been found of the waste thrown in the landfill other than ‘industrial and sanitary waste,’ but no other method of removal was used during the period other than tossing and pouring items into the surrounding bays," Ordine charges.

"In 1987 one of monitoring wells at the edge of the landfill showed a high concentration of naphthalene—one of the byproducts of decomposing gasoline. Subsequent samples have shown a sharp drop in those levels leading to the obvious conclusion that the contamination has been flushed by the movement of ground water into Little Neck Bay.

"The addition of many thousands of gallons of water into the landfill by fire fighting exercises would speed the corrosion of buried drums and containers of waste and push more toxic materials under the site into the surrounding waters."

Finally, Ordine wants answers to what will happen if the Fire Dept. does not use a water recovery system. Since even the run-off of such operations is a serious environmental hazard to the Bays, such a system is essential to protect the waters.

In addition, to ensure fire academy trainees are not incinerated, some care will be needed to ensure no methane is liberated by pile driving into the landfill for construction of structures to be set ablaze."