Gary Defoe Jr., in the center holding a cluster bomb, and Frank Koehn (left) talked to Marco Good (right) about the attempts the Red Cliff Band of Lake Superior Chippewa are making to have the government remove the 1,400 to 1,500 steel barrels filled with military waste from the bottom of Lake Superior dumped there in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Koehn and Defoe Jr. brought the discussion to the Grand Marais Library on Wednesday, May 11.
It’s been almost two years since Gary Defoe Jr. and Frank Koehn were at the Grand Marais Public Library with an update on the steel barrels filled with munitions and slag the U.S. military dumped into Lake Superior in the late 1950s and early 1960s. The news was grim.
Recent analysis of 22 barrels that the Red Cliff Band of Lake Superior Chippewa pulled from the lake bottom in 2012 detected PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls), PAHs (polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons), and concentrations of metals that exceed the Minnesota Pollution Control Agencies (MPCA) sediment quality targets.
According to the report issued by Ridolfi Environmental, an environmental consulting and engineering firm specializing in habitat restoration hired by Red Cliff, “The remaining barrel contents are still uncharacterized, and the potential exists for inadvertent recovery by the general public. While the barrels are presently containing their contents, they should not be expected to do so in the indefinite future.”
Defoe Jr. said the level of PCBs discovered in some containers was 2,500 times over the limit for humans.
Of course the biggest surprise initially was finding items used to build cluster bombs.
According to the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) manifest, the barrels were supposed to be filled with ash, slag and debris, with no mention of 600 to 700 ejection cup assemblies used in cluster bombs found in 22 out 25 barrels. And rather than degrade and become harmless, the ejector cup assemblies have an active ejection charge propellant that becomes more dangerous as it ages.
The Red Cliff Native American Lands Environmental Mitigation Program (NALEMP) is conducting the Lake Superior Barrels Project. Gary Defoe, Jr. is the NALEMP program manager and Koehn is the NALEMP public relations director.
Between 1959-1962, the military used the cover of darkness to dump anywhere from 1,400 to 1,500 steel 55-gallon barrels into 100 to 300 feet of water near Duluth. The best guess, said Koehn, is that there are about 880,000 pounds of military waste sitting on the lake bottom.
Just where all the barrels are is somewhat of a mystery because only general locations were marked when they were thrown overboard. To date six general locations have been identified (Lester River, Talmadge River, French River, Sucker River, Knife River and Shoreview Road) but Koehn said there is evidence there are more than those six sites.
The identified areas range in size from .4 to 4.5 square miles with water depths ranging from 37 to nearly 500 feet. Koehn said approximately 116 square miles of the lake bottom have been scanned, which resulted in 909 sonar targets that are considered possible barrel locations.
None of this might have come to light if not for a local fisherman who in 1968 caught some barrels in his net about seven miles northeast from Duluth. But who had thrown the barrels in the lake? And how long were they down there?
Upon investigating, MPCA confirmed that the majority of the barrels had come from the Twin Cities Army Ammunition Plant (TCAAP) in Arden Hills.
From 1968 to 1995 the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, MPCA, and Environmental Pollution Control Agency (EPA) looked for the barrels and characterized their contents, and in 1996 the three units of government agreed to close the case.
About that time Red Cliff entered the fray—the barrels had been dumped in waters governed by treaties—and the band wanted to know if the barrels were a threat (or could be a threat) to the natural resources in the Ceded Territory.
When the first tightly sealed containers were cast overboard they had to be shot so they would sink, Koehn said. Cement was placed on the ends of the rest of the barrels so they would sink, he said.
Koehn said one theory is the DOD put the barrels into the lake because it was a cheap way to get rid of them.
After more than half century in the water the steel drums are starting to erode. Koehn showed pictures of barrels in various states of decay.
“We do know the barrels can’t last forever so what’s in the barrels needs to be identified,” he said.
The military used steel barrels made of three types of thickness. Just how thick they are is hard to know because the DOD classified them as being thick, thicker, and thickest. “I’m not kidding,” said Koehn. “That’s the way they are described.”
Defoe was on the barge that conducted the 2012 salvage. He said he was surprised to see a blast detection area set up on the barge and people wearing special clothing to protect themselves from potential explosions. After all, he said, the barrels were supposed to be filled with ash, slag and debris.
Once the contents of the barrels were determined they were repacked—the ones with munitions anyway—into 85-gallon drums and sunk back into the water where they sat for another year until the Corps of Engineers could find a place that could handle the materials.
Koehn said both the city of Superior, Wisconsin and the city of Duluth, Minnesota fought to have the barrels removed from the lake, but they were rebuffed because they didn’t have the governmental structure to fight the entities connected to the waste.
That’s where Red Cliff comes in. Because it is a First Nation with treaty rights and a tribal government, it has judicial authorities and legal powers those cities and towns don’t have, said Koehn.
The Red Cliff Band would like to pull up 45 more barrels from various sites, especially ones located in deep-water sites.
“We need to do a risk assessment of what is in those barrels. We need to form a good database. It’s hard to know what is down there,” Koehn said.
No barrels will be pulled out this year. Instead Red Cliff will continue to work with Ridolfi Environmental, and Koehn and Defoe Jr. will continue to speak at community meetings about the potential threat that lies at the lake bottom.
“This isn’t just about our people. It’s about all of us,” said Koehn.
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