By William Wan
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, August 20, 2008

The Maryland attorney general announced plans yesterday to sue the Army to enforce a federal environmental order to clean up pollution at Fort Meade.

For more than a decade, Environmental Protection Agency officials have detected contaminants, some known to cause cancer and other health problems, at Fort Meade and other military sites. Army, EPA and Maryland officials have been working for years to clean up the pollution.

Last year, the EPA issued an order saying that the dumped chemicals at Fort Meade might pose "imminent and substantial dangers to public health." The order came with deadlines to expedite the cleanup and gave the EPA leverage to force compliance. The Defense Department, however, resisted the order. And under executive branch policy, the EPA will not sue the military as it would a private polluter.

"That's reason for the state's lawsuit," said Austin Schlick, chief of litigation in Attorney General Douglas F. Gansler's office, "the Army's failure to comply with the deadlines imposed by EPA."

Fort Meade officials did not respond to questions yesterday. In a letter sent to The Washington Post last month, after a front-page story about the wrangling between the Army and the EPA, army officials said they had spent $84 million to clean up several of the contaminated sites at Fort Meade and had budgeted more than $24 million to complete the effort.

"The Army has consistently expressed a strong desire to enter into cleanup agreements for its remaining [National Priorities List] sites, at Fort Meade, Md., and Redstone Arsenal, Ala.," wrote Tad Davis, deputy assistant secretary of the Army for environment, safety and occupational health.

Gansler issued yesterday's notice under a federal provision that allows citizens to sue to have an environmental act enforced. Under federal rules, the state must give 90 days notice to the Army, as Gansler did yesterday, before officially filing the lawsuit.

State officials said there is no immediate public health threat but want the Army to commit to a legally binding agreement to clean up Fort Meade as soon as possible.