Picatinny Arsenal's contamination may be larger than previously known, report shows
ROCKAWAY TOWNSHIP – A microcosm of American industrialization, Picatinny Arsenal has evolved more thoroughly and rapidly than just about any part of North Jersey.
It opened less than 150 years ago as the Dover Powder Depot with brick bunkers designed to fill explosive ingredients. Today, workers at the 5,853-acre complex officially known as the U.S. military's Joint Center of Excellence for Guns and Ammunition hone the nation's highest-end armament.
Surrounded by a fence and guarded 24 hours per day, the area is home to classified military weaponry, ammunition research and engineering. The arsenal's portfolio "comprises nearly 90% of the Army’s lethality and all conventional ammunition for joint warfighters," according to its website.
It is America's test kitchen for weaponry. It is also one of the most polluted sites in North Jersey.
Inevitable mistakes in a quest for progression have made an ecological impact. The U.S. Army's newly released sixth Five-Year Review for the Picatinny Arsenal Superfund site analyzed 22 remedial actions underway to clean up pollution among its 156 documented areas of concern, according to U.S. Environmental Protection Agency records.
There are chlorinated volatile organic compounds in groundwater, metal and chemical toxins in soil and unexploded ordnance on and off-site, records show.
Most remediation efforts are working as planned, EPA records show. One is not.
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Environmental impact
Fifteen years ago, in April 2007, a permeable reactive barrier was installed to treat polluted groundwater under a roughly 90-acre swath of south-central Picatinny Arsenal. It was positioned using continuous trenching technology to treat groundwater before it enters Green Pond Brook along the Picatinny Arsenal Golf Course. The brook drains the valley that contains the arsenal before merging with the Rockaway River near the National Guard Armory in Dover.
Recent reports show trichloroethene has been detected southwest of the permeable reactive barrier. It has also been found on the plume's western edge, where records show groundwater flows will likely take it around the barrier and toward the Green Pond Brook.
While found in relatively low levels in up to a third of community water systems, trichloroethene at high levels can damage the nervous system, lungs and liver and lead to abnormal heartbeat, coma and possibly death, according to New Jersey Department of Health records.
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At Picatinny, the extent of the groundwater contamination is unknown. The report released this month warns that the footprint of the plume may be larger than currently understood. Likewise, it states "the vapor intrusion assessment may not evaluate all potential impacts" on buildings in the area.
EPA and U.S. Army representatives said they are planning an expansion of the well-monitoring network and new modeling to determine the possible extent of volatile organic compound contamination in buildings on site. They have a three-year plan that will include modifications to protections for Green Pond Brook.
The barrier itself may be at fault. Records show groundwater is migrating south of the barrier. Moreover, increasing concentrations of vinyl chloride have been detected in and around Green Pond Brook.
Building 24 at the heart of contamination
The source of the contamination, according to Army records, was Building 24, a metal plating facility built in 1942 to wash, degrease, plate and etch metal parts. It used various acids and caustic solutions and created dangerous waste in the form of spent cyanide and chromic solutions.
State inspectors in 1980 discovered the waste discharge. Records show Building 24 used a dry well and infiltration lagoons to hold treated wastewater, records show.
Both likely allowed high concentrations of organic and chlorinated solvents, primarily TCE, to seep underground before operations there ended in 1985, records show. Researchers believe the contaminants migrated and are now imbedded in the silts and clays at the base of an unconfined aquifer.
Partially torn down in 1999, Building 24 sat on Third Avenue, just southwest of the intersection with Farley Avenue. Some of it still stands, as a welding shop.
The chlorinated solvent plume in the groundwater beneath it defines Area D. The groundwater plume sits under a parking lot and golf course. Though, it also contains the Lincoln Conference Center and other substantial structures. It roughly sits between First Street and Farley Avenue. Green Pond Brook and Green Pound Mountain otherwise hem it in.
Picatinny - the early years
The Rockaway valley that contains the plume would likely be packed with single family homes and relatively pollution free if not for Stephen Benet, a 19th century U.S. Army brigadier general. When seeking a spot for a new powder depot in the 1870s, U.S. military officials first eyed Peekskill, New York. Then, they considered a spot near Queens. Both proved too pricey, records show.
Rockaway fit the bill. The 1880 cost for the original 1,196 acres was $35,874, just a fraction of the $200,000 budget, records show.
Some military officials questioned the choice. The most inland of the three sites, Rockaway was perhaps more vulnerable to attack, Benet relented according to Army records. Still, Benet argued that the valley was sufficiently protected amid the hills of New Jersey's Northern Highlands. Moreover, the site would draw the least attention, concerns and outcry, he reasoned. Nearby Kenvil had an established dynamite works, so the threat of explosions at the power depot would be less offensive to residents in the nearby villages of Mount Hope and Wharton, then called Port Oram.
In 1880, U.S. Army officials established the arsenal in Rockaway as a war reserve in case supplies were cut. U.S. Army officials wanted a place to store exotic explosive materials difficult to source in wartime. Among them was sodium nitrate. Imported from South America's West Coast, the material was used to make nitric acid for smokeless powder manufacturing.
Founded as the Dover Powder Depot, the site had a new name within a week. "Dover's powder" was a well-known medicinal blend invented by an English doctor. Moreover, the property was in Rockaway, not Dover.
Several localities, including Denmark, Green Pond and Clifford, were among the front runners for the arsenal's new name, records show. However, “Piccatinny," the name of a peak edging the valley, made the cut.
Piccatinny Power Depot acted as the official name until 1883, when the site became the United States Powder Depot. The old name lost a "C," but the moniker of Picatinny stuck around.
Picatinny through the war years
Today, Picatinny Arsenal is plastered on the sign at the main entrance off a three-lane section of Route 15. Among the first things visible past the checkpoint near the Visitor's Center are traces of a community built by Lewis Spicer in the 1850s. Known as Spicertown, it was acquired by the military during a 1941 expansion and used to house Picatinny officers for the next 60 years.
Soon after is the Cannon Gate and the stone wall built in 1885 by arsenal's original mason, Thomas Robinson. He built the Cannon Gate one year prior. Cannon balls top the gatepost and four 8-inch "columbiad" cannons from 1855 give it a distinct appearance and an obvious name. For his labor, Robinson earned $2.75 per day, records show.
The site became an enclave for munitions before the Spanish-American War. In 1908, it became the first U.S. Army site producing and manufacturing smokeless powder and munitions. During World War I, all large caliber shells for the U.S. armed forces were loaded in Rockaway.
By the war's end, the arsenal was also making and storing pyrotechnic signals and flares, melt-loaded projectiles and bombs filled with TNT.
Lightning strike explosion changes Picatinny
Similar munitions storage and related activities were also occurring to the immediate east, where federal officials in 1891 granted the U.S. Navy 315 acres for its own facility: the Lake Denmark Powder Depot. It was there, in 1926 when a lightning strike would cause $40 million in damage, change the look of the arsenal and spur operational changes for the sake of safety.
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The strike triggered a series of explosions among 2.4 million pounds of munitions, including 1.6 million pounds of TNT in one storehouse, records show. Everything within a 2,700-foot radius was either torched or obliviated. Nineteen people died.
After the 1926 explosion, a rebuild with the help of the Works Progress Administration led to a reshape. Spread warehouses, lighting rods, fire hydrants and other safeguards were adopted. By World War II, production of smokeless powder, tetryl and other explosive compounds was back in full swing. The Korean and Vietnam war eras brought still increasingly complex explosives, such as C-4, T-9 and polymer bonded explosives, or PBX. Today, production is limited to pilot-scale. Work is concentrated on research, development and engineering of armament items, life-cycle engineering and weapon systems support.
The traces of former large-scale production and munitions testing nonetheless mark the arsenal.
The entire 600 Area hugging Green Pond Mountain is contained within the Robinson Enclosure. A restricted access area, it secures a site marred by groundwater contamination and a munitions waste pit. The area was used for explosive and ballistic testing from 1928 into the early 1990s. In 2019, federal officials approved a plan to excavate the entire pit containing TCE-contaminated soil, munitions and munitions debris.
The most recent cleanup plan covers four sites in Lake Picatinny. Proposed in March 2021, it calls for the capping of lakeshore sediments containing elevated levels of lead, mercury and TNT.
In the 1920s, the U.S. Army operated a 3-inch gun range over the lake. Between 1910 and 1960, it stored smokeless powder underwater to safeguard it from lightning, heat and spontaneous ignition. In the 1970s, it tested pyrotechnics on Whiley's Island, also known as Flare Island, records show.
Modern cleanup plans are more deliberate than past measures. In the early 1980s, buildings in the 500 Area used to create explosive powder from hazardous chemical were burned as officials deemed other tactics cost-prohibitive. There are 46 buildings in that area used to store and make propellants, paints and solvents that still concern officials, according to discussions at the arsenal's Oct. 5, 2021 Environmental Restoration Advisory Board meeting. Almost all have been demolished.
In most cases, the contaminations are nonetheless well mapped. That is not always the case. During that Oct. 5 meeting officials referenced an underground solvent vault records show was constructed in 1918, destroyed in the 1926 explosion and never located.
Picatinny Arsenal's first 100 years
1880: Established as the Dover Powder Depot to store explosive powder and components
1890s: Starts production packing silk bags with powder for artillery charges
1908: First smokeless powder manufacturing plant starts production
1911: Creates a school for chemistry, explosives and ballistics.
1914-1918: Study of propellant powders and high explosives ramps up during WWI
1926: Explosion at the adjoining Naval Ammunition Depot at Lake Denmark wrecks arsenal
1927-1930s: Works Progress Administration helps restore damage
1931: Main chemical laboratory opens
1941-1945: Expands research, development and production of fuses, explosives and tank ammunition
1946: Begins rocket engine testing with aid of Reaction Motors, Inc.
1946-1970s: Engineers, tests and produces rocket engines for missiles and tactical nukes
1977: Establishes itself as Armament Research and Development Command, ends production at scale
1986: Becomes known as the U.S. Army Armament Research, Development, and Engineering Center
Source: U.S. Army records, Patrick Owens' "Picatinny: The First Century."
David Zimmer is a local reporter for NorthJersey.com. For unlimited access to the most important news from your local community, please subscribe or activate your digital account today.
Email: zimmer@northjersey.comTwitter: @dzimmernews
This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: Picatinny Arsenal contamination larger than previously known
