Army investigating ordnance found in driveway material

[leftchick]

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=2270&ncid=2270&e=2&u=/krwashbureau/20050216/ts_krwashbureau/_bc_clammunition_wa

~snip~


The U.S. Army is investigating incidents of unexploded World War I-era munitions showing up in clamshells used as paving material for driveways and parking areas in Delaware, Maryland and Virginia.


The ordnance was dredged up over the past 18 months from the ocean floor during mechanical clam harvesting operations off the New Jersey coast, in the vicinity of Atlantic City, according to Robert Williams of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which is conducting the probe.


More than 300 munitions - mostly British and French-made hand grenades but at least one 75 mm projectile containing a chemical agent - have been recovered from 18 driveways and a Delaware clam-processing plant, Williams said.


Some grenades were actually found inside the clams.


Last February, a Bridgeville, Del., resident discovered 32 corroded - but live - hand grenades while spreading crushed clamshells delivered to his property. Subsequent similar discoveries triggered the investigation.


:wow:

[HysteryDiagnosis]

1. Home grown IED's.... how quaint. WTF? I know the military

often dumps "excess stuff" into the ocean, but this is a wee bit much.

[Conservativesux]

2. I'm surpised that a WW I hand grenade survived 90 years in the sea!

Its astounding that a live hand-grenade could survive that long.

Well, we know Princess Diana was on the right track in the removal or imposition of landmines to be manufactured to degrade over time, thus allowing future generations of humans to live with all thier limbs intact, bless her heart.

[jody]

3. A few munition items recovered from the ocean floor is nothing compared

to the billions of tons of garbage dumped by major cities in the ocean.
We have poisoned the ocean and some day it will come back to harm us.

[leftchick]

4. cruise ships...

I think of that everytime I see a commercial for a cruise ship. they dump so much garbage it is unbelievable.

[jody]

6. And it never ends "Arctic Becoming Chemical Waste Sump"

Arctic Becoming Chemical Waste Sump, Says WWF

QUOTE
The Arctic, already a dump for Russian nuclear waste from the Cold War, is also rapidly becoming a chemical sump for the globe, the World Wide Fund for Nature said on Thursday.

New research had found even higher concentrations of banned pesticides like DDT in the Arctic environment than in the countries that produced them.

"This is a catastrophe for the Arctic," said WWF UK toxics program head Elizabeth Salter Green. "Contamination is increasing and more and more chemicals are being found in Arctic species."
UNQUOTE

[RC]

5. Not to worry...,

Global warming or bu$H's Apocalypse will do us in before that.

[SheepBootHero]

7. Why did France and the British dump grenades in our waters?

Or did they drift all the way here from across the Atlantic?

[Career Prole]

8. The missing WMDs! The missing WMDs!

This is hugh!
We gotcha now Saddam, you sly boots!
:bounce: :bounce: :bounce: :bounce: :bounce:

[malestripper4u]

9. OK

That's FUNNY!

MS

[Historic NY]

10. Serious problem still in France, people are still getting killed by

old munitions on or near battlefield sites. A couple of yrs back a Canadian officer was killed by unexploded shell at WW1 site.

[TX-RAT]

11. Some grenades were actually found inside the clams. ?

Must have been some Monster clams. Most of the clams I've seen were smaller than the grenades.

[woodsprite]

12. I don't think they were dumped there

The whole area that they are dredging them up from is between Cape Henlopen DE and Cape May NJ. The area at Cape Henlopen was known as Ft. Miles. That area was used as an artilery range in WWI and WWII

Here's some links with info

http://www.subvets.org/News/lochist.htm
http://www.camprehoboth.com/issue10_15_04/state_parks.htm
http://www.rehoboth.com/dbl/dbltowers.asp

[Wilms]

13. "Bombies"

ITVS Story:

Between 1964 and 1973, the United States conducted a "secret" war, dropping over two million tons of bombs on the mountains and jungles of Laos. Many of these bombs - especially a newly developed weapon called a "cluster bomb" - failed to explode when they hit the ground, leaving the landscape littered with millions of unexploded bombs, as dangerous today as when they fell from the sky three decades ago.

Dubbed "bombies" by Laotian villagers, these eye-catching but deadly orbs, as brightly colored as exotic fruit, are still found by children playing in shallow dirt, in the clefts of bamboo branches, or in the furrows of fields where farmers still till the soil by striking the earth with a hoe.

-snip/more-

<http://www.itvs.org/bombies/story.html>

[damntexdem]

14. Sounds like driveway construction is becoming:

a booming business.