Cornhusker Army Ammunition Plant_Fillable_v5
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School
Iowa Western Community College *
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Course
103
Subject
Geography
Date
Dec 6, 2023
Type
Pages
13
Uploaded by MateDeerPerson136
Cornhusker Army Ammunition Plant
Overview
In 1942 the Cornhusker Army Ammunition Plant (CHAAP) was
built a few miles west of Grand Island, NE to produce
munitions to support the efforts of WWII.
It was established as
a government owned/contractor operated (GOCO) facility with
the Quaker Oats Company as the first contractor to operate
the plant.
During the peak of WWII, they employed 4,229
workers to aid in the loading of 90 and 260-pound
fragmentation bombs, 1,000 and 2,000-pound general
demolition bombs, and 105 mm high explosive artillery shells
for the Howitzer.
Over the course of WWII, it is estimated that
more than 10 million bombs and shells were assembled there.
To learn more about the history of the plant, watch the
following short video:
http://www.nebraskastudies.org/1925-
1949/the-war-nebraska-stories/nebraskans-pitch-in/
CHAAP was again active during the Korean War and Vietnam
until it was shut down in 1973.
The plant has been on standby
status since then and the land was leased for agriculture,
grazing and wildlife management.
In the 1980’s, it was
discovered that the groundwater was contaminated with the
explosives TNT (2,4,5-trinitrotoluene) and RDX (Cyclonite) in addition to smaller amounts of RDX and
other chemicals.
In 1987, CHAAP was declared a Superfund site and added to the National Priorities List
which is overseen by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
Superfund sites are polluted locations
in the United States requiring a long-term response to clean up hazardous material contaminations.
The
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers was tasked with overseeing the clean-up and reporting to the EPA.
You have been hired by the Corps of Engineers to complete a site assessment and aid in developing a
remediation plan.
The first step in this process is to do a preliminary site analysis using existing data.
You will then have the opportunity to gather additional data to determine the extent and the source of
the contamination.
Finally, you will give recommendations towards a remediation plan to clean up the
contamination.
Stage 1: Preliminary Analysis
You have just started the task of completing a preliminary site analysis of the plant and the surrounding
regions.
The goal of Stage 1 is to gain a good understanding of the situation in order to determine what
additional data you need to collect (Stage 2) in order to create a remediation or clean-up plan (Stage 3).
During Stage 2 you will be able to drill wells and test for contaminants; however, you don’t have
unlimited funds so you will need to make informed decisions on where these wells will be drilled.
To aid
in this process you will want to compile information on both plant operations and the geology of the
region.
For some background information on groundwater and how groundwater moves,
read through
pages 130-133 in your lab manual.
Figure 1
. During WWII, many rural
women went to work in military
plants like the CHAAP. Source NARA
Take a few minutes to brainstorm about the types of information you would want to collect for a
preliminary analysis.
What questions would you ask about CHAAP and the geology?
What data sets
would you want to look at?
What preliminary analysis could you complete using these data sets?
1.
In the space provided, write a short paragraph to outline your approach to completing the
preliminary analysis.
Be sure to include at least three questions you would need to answer as
well as address the information and data sets that you will need to collect and analyze in this
process.
Layout & Operations of CHAAP
The Cornhusker Army Ammunition Plant is divided into different regions as can be seen on Figure 2
below.
The load, assembly and packing of the ammunition took place in the load lines, which were a
collection of large buildings interconnected with a series of covered walkways that housed conveying
systems.
Empty shells came in the South end of the 4 main load lines and worked their way up the line
until the finished product emerged from the North end.
The bombs were then transported to one of the
219 storage bunkers called igloos before they were shipped out via rail lines that ran between the load
lines and magazine areas. These storage bunkers can be seen in the aerial photo shown in Figure 2
(North & South Magazine Areas).
A smaller 5
th
load line was built for the production of fuses and
boosters during the Korean War and the manufacturing of micro gravel mines during Vietnam.
The explosives were received in flake form and then screened and sifted for use in the ammunitions. The
dust created from this process was sucked into the ventilation and washed from the air with Schneible
units (wet scrubbers).
Wastewater was generated from the Schneible units as well as from cleaning of
machinery and other surfaces. Some of this wastewater ran via interior building drains into a concrete
pit where a filter bag (made of canvas-like material) was placed to collect the solid explosive particles.
The wastewater was then transferred via concrete channels into 56 earthen surface impoundments,
which were located near the five production areas.
Dried solids from the bottom of the pits were
periodically scraped and ignited, along with other contaminated materials, at the burning grounds in the
northwest corner of CHAAP.
The northwest corner of the grounds also contained a sanitary landfill and
a pistol range.
The main administration building was located in the southeast section of the grounds
along with base housing.
To the north of the housing was a fertilizer manufacturer (marked as nitrate
on Fig. 2) as well as a shop area with maintenance buildings and a storage area.
2.
From this description,
where
would you expect
to see the most contamination and what would be
the source of this contamination?
Figure 2
. Aerial view (right) of the CHAAP with an illustrated map (left) showing the locations of interest.
Stratigraphy & Permeability
Topsoil
Soils at CHAAP are predominantly windblown silts.
On-site,
topsoil depths range from 1-2’; however the thickness varies in
surrounding area and can reach up to 20’. The soils are
generally described as dark brown to black, organic silty clay.
Grand Island Formation
This is underlain by the Grand Island Formation (see Figure 3),
which is predominantly Quaternary age fluvial sands and
gravels deposited during the Kansan stage of glaciation.
This
formation averages 40 to 60 feet in thickness in the study area.
Since we are concerned with groundwater contamination, it is
important to know about the
hydraulic conductivity
of the
rocks or sediment.
Similar to permeability, the hydraulic
conductivity is a measure of how fast (in centimeters per
second) water flows through the rocks.
To gain a better sense
of what hydraulic conductivity is and how it is measured, you
are going to use a simple falling head permeameter to measure the hydraulic conductivity of two
samples.
The first sample is a fine sand and the second sample is a coarse sand similar to what you
would find in the Grand Island Formation. The procedure to calculate the hydraulic conductivity is
outlined in Exercise 2 in your lab manual (page 135).
Since you do not have access to the materials or
samples, some of the steps have been completed for you and recorded.
The video for Sample 1: Fine
Sand can be found at:
https://use.vg/96OO0i
and the video for Sample 2: Coarse Sand can be accessed
here:
https://use.vg/zN5LpQ
.
Step 1 has been completed as you can see on the videos, and the height,
L, of the samples has been set to 10 cm (Step 2).
Using the videos, follow along with the remaining steps
to calculate the hydraulic conductivity of both samples.
In Step 7, you will need to calculate a natural
log (ln).
If you do not have access to a scientific calculator you can type ‘scientific calculator’ into a
google search and one will be provided for you. As you work through the process complete the table
below.
3.
Hydraulic Conductivity Experiment
Sample 1:
Fine Sand
Sample 2:
Coarse Sand
Height from bottom of permeameter to the top of
the sample (in cm)
L =
10 cm
10 cm
Initial height of the water as measured from the
bottom of the tube (in cm)
h
1
=
Water height when you stopped timing (in cm)
h
2
=
Time (in seconds)
t =
Hydraulic Conductivity (in cm/s)
K =
Figure 3
(left). Stratigraphy of the
subsurface layers at CHAAP
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