The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) Louisville District hosted a public meeting April 26 to share the proposed cleanup plan of four sites at the Former Camp Ellis Military Reservation—a formerly used defense site (FUDS) in Table Grove, Illinois.
More than 125,000 troops trained at Camp Ellis during World War II and approximately 7,000 German and Austrian prisoners of war were housed there in the 1940s. Camp Ellis was used from 1943 to 1950 for various types of military training including small arms and munitions training.
As part of the Defense Environmental Restoration Program-FUDS cleanup program, USACE manages the cleanup at properties where there is Department of Defense generated contamination. USACE started work at the roughly 18,000-acre Camp Ellis property in the 1990s and now has four sites remaining to be addressed. The meeting explained the selected remedy for each of the four sites. Of those sites recommended for cleanup, two are munitions sites—the Aircraft Bombing Area and the Obstacle Area. For both of these sites USACE is recommending surface and subsurface clearance of MEC (munitions and explosives of concern) to mitigate explosive hazards.
The other two areas recommended for cleanup are the East Landfill and the Wastewater Treatment Plant Sludge Digesters, where the Corps proposes to do excavation of the sediment and the sludge in the digesters with off-site disposal.
“These remedial actions would remove soil with contaminant concentrations exceeding remediation goals, and mitigate the threat of release of hazardous substances from sediment,” said Cindy Ries, USACE Louisville District technical manager. “All of our remediation goals will be protective of human health and the environment.”