I note that the New York Sanitation Department was planning to dredge the Narrows for a new waste transfer station serving the city. The operative word is 'was'.
Scattered under only 20 feet of water were eight World War II-era copper artillery shells -- including one five feet long -- designed to shoot down airplanes, and about 1,500 large-caliber machine-gun shells designed to explode on contact."What a find!" shouted Ritter as he climbed aboard the vessel. "They're all over the place. Hundreds of them."
Ritter and munitions experts believe the ammo came from the stockpile of 14,470 live rounds that splashed into the bay during a military accident on March 4, 1954.
The aircraft carrier USS Bennington, moored off the fort, had unloaded the firepower onto a barge tied to its side. But the barge broke free during a violent storm, overturned and drifted six miles to the Rockaways -- littering the muddy floor of the Narrows and Gravesend Bay with live ammo along the way.
“Unless there was an undocumented accident in the bay, what we found has to be from the Bennington,” Ritter said.
Experts said if the ammunition is live, it could be dangerous to anyone who tries to move it – or to any ship that goes off course into shallow waters and scrapes the sea floor.
The discovery raises serious safety concerns about whether the city should move forward with plans to dredge in Gravesend Bay off Bensonhurst -- a mile south of the Bennington accident site -- to build a waste-transfer station, said Assemblyman William Colton (D-Brooklyn).
Colton said if heavy machinery used to remove sediment from the bay’s floor disturbs the bombs “it could be a catastrophe” considering “there’s an oil depot nearby.”
Dredging could also loosen the shells from their resting place at the muddy bottom. Because they are encased in air-filled canisters, they could surface and drift to nearby beaches and shipping lanes.
The city’s Sanitation Department declined comment.
There's more at the link.
Er . . . yes, quite! Dredging explosive-filled mud might result in a great deal of sewage transfer - albeit not quite in the manner intended by the Sanitation Department!
Peter
A similar incident happened when the bridge over Oresund between Sweden and Denmark was built. They had to halt further construction while specialists removed the explosives.
ReplyDeleteJust a few weeks ago they found an unexploded Tallboy bomb here in Bremen at a constrution site
ReplyDeleteBut you get used to the fact that the whole country is still littered with unexploded ordonance (at least those incidents finally slow down with a lot having been discovered by now)
They're still digging up WWI munitions in France.
ReplyDeleteAny case for a shell isn't going to have enough air to make it float. Damage and injury to workers and equipment is a concern though. Use sonar to find out what all is down in the area to be dug, and figure out how much it would cost to clear it. That's the next step here.