Meeting Set Today On Munitions Search At Airport

BROOKSVILLE - More than six decades after the U.S. Army stopped using its Brooksville airfield for chemical weapons training, officials today will give the public a final briefing on a project meant to ensure no toxic material still lurked underground.

By 2004, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers was confident that there were no chemicals buried on what is now the Hernando County Airport.

Now that the final report on the project has been inked, the Corps will hold a public meeting at 6:30 p.m. today at the Civil Air Patrol Office, 3151 Air Commerce Blvd., Brooksville.

Corps staffers will be on hand to discuss the $1.2 million project that started back in 1996, said spokeswoman Amanda Ellison.

The Corps sent out letters to 90 property owners to notify them about the meeting, Ellison said.

The Brooksville Army Air Field was built on 2,500 acres in 1943. Two years later, the Army transferred its chemical warfare research program to the site.

Toxic chemicals meant to incapacitate enemy troops, including mustard gas, were stored at the air field. Crews also filled bombs with the chemicals, and the munitions were tested at the Army's gunnery range in the Withlacoochee State Forest.

The Army transferred the program to Maryland in 1946, cleaned up the site as best as 1940s technology and standards would allow, and gave the air field to the city of Brooksville the following year. The airport transferred to Hernando County in 1961.

In the late 1990s, after reviewing documents and interviewing witnesses, the Corps feared some of the chemicals might still be buried in canisters there. Crews zeroed in on three areas, including one between the current airport's two runways and one just to the west of U.S. 41. The Corps suspected a third area, on airport property north of Spring Hill Drive and east of the Hernando County Jail, to be a dumping site.

A contractor used a high-powered metal detector to identify some 200 pieces of buried metal in the three areas. Workers in chemical suits dug up a lot of scrap material, but none turned out to be toxin-filled containers or bombs.

The Corps verified that with Hernando County Airport Director Don Silvernell last year. None of the suspected sites were in heavily traveled areas, but the results helped put staffers more at ease, Silvernell said.

"We were very happy to know that," Silvernell said.

Contractors will be, too. The airport will be starting construction on new hangars near the east runway by the end of the year, and a drainage retention area is planned for one of the sites cleared by the Corps, Silvernell said.

The final report on the search for chemicals at the former Brooksville Air Field is available at the Hernando County Public Library's Brooksville branch, 238 Howell Ave.

For more information, call the Corps at 800-291-9413.