GRAYLING -- As convoys of military trucks rumble north
to Camp Grayling, in the rural heart of Michigan's richest state forests, some
local residents are preparing their own summer battle plans.
After five years of silence, Air National Guard jets this spring resumed dropping powerful 500-pound bombs on the camp's North Range, reawakening anger over environmental damage from bombing and anxieties about safety in surrounding communities.
In the next three months, about 14,000 weekend soldiers of the National Guard, reserves and some foreign forces are scheduled to fire mortars, machine guns, rockets, tanks and heavy artillery at the unique and sandy site, three hours north of Metro Detroit.
Yet Grayling is also home to the Au Sable River, revered nationwide for its purity by anglers and canoeists. Reviving a decade-old battle, some anglers are concerned that chemicals and metals from shells are reaching the river and Crawford County's groundwater.
"Is there any question that explosives hold toxic chemicals? It's time for the firing -- all the firing --to stop," said Edward McGlinn of Anglers of the Au Sable, a group of 600 concerned sportsmen.
Adding to that cry, politicians have started to question the need for training part-time troops in combat arms near cottages and expanding developments.
"Our mission is to provide good training, but also to retain the natural resources," said camp deputy commander Lt. Col. Thomas F. Lamie, who maintains that the firing range is environmentally sound. "Everybody here is clued into that."
State Rep. Ken Bradstreet, R-Gaylord, has called for a meeting with Camp Grayling officials to inquire about updated maps for visiting troops. Those maps, he said, need to reflect the growing local population and guarantee margins of safety during live-fire training.
In 1994, an Illinois National Guard unit sent a 105mm howitzer shell careening into a subdivision, leaving a crater three feet deep and sending shrapnel through the walls of a house. No injuries were reported.
"I haven't gotten legitimate answers to my questions," Bradstreet said. "The camp isn't as good at dealing with the public as they should be."
With 25 million acres set aside for military training across the nation, debate over the need for realistic exercises and the dangers they inevitably bring resonates beyond Camp Grayling, the largest military base, in area, east of the Mississippi River.
In May, 200 protesters were arrested at Vieques Island, Puerto Rico, after the U.S. Navy admitted that depleted uranium shells fired in training contaminated island soils with radiation. Last year, a civilian security guard was killed at the Vieques range when Navy jets dropped two 500-pound bombs off their target.
Yet Camp Grayling can point to recent environmental gains that receive grudging praise from even the most entrenched opponents of the summer shelling.
In the past decade, the duration and timing of artillery practice have been tailored to reduce disturbances for residents. New camp rules order visiting soldiers to report any fuel spills from tanks, trucks and tracked vehicles.
Electronic detectors now monitor noise on firing ranges. Sturdy wooden bridges prevent soldiers from driving through the Au Sable's feeder streams, yet allow fish to pass freely upstream. A new water-treatment plant keeps human waste from polluting nearby Lake Margrethe, and has become an unexpected home to nesting bald eagles.
And since the 1990s, the camp has hired a full-time environmental staff to help monitor threatened and endangered birds, plants and reptiles on Camp Grayling's 147,000 acres of jack pine and timber. Most of the camp is on state land leased to the military.
Camp officials spent five years and $2.2 million studying Range 40 after questions were raised about chemicals escaping into the area's porous sands. The range, east of Interstate 75, includes bombing grounds for aircraft and artillery. Some 50 wells were drilled to sample the water.
Testing followed for lead, arsenic, mercury, iron, cadmium, phosphorous and other metals and chemicals used in explosives. The base is subject to all state and federal pollution laws.
The findings, published two years ago and approved by the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality, found that most contaminants were below legal limits. High levels of lead in areas where excess gunpowder was burned were cleaned and the burning was stopped, according to the report.
Tests of sediments and surface waters showed elevated levels of metals at some sites, but the study concluded that fish and aquatic insects were probably not affected. Annual monitoring of the water continues by Department of Environmental Quality officials.
"We go above and beyond the standards set by law," said John Hunt, the base's environmental manager. He co-authored the study.
Camp officials expected local criticism would end there. Suspicions by some anglers that trout numbers had fallen because of water pollution were apparently unfounded. State biologists report that fish numbers throughout most of the Au Sable this year are healthy.
But a core of opponents remains unconvinced, citing both Camp Grayling's self-testing and the Department of Environmental Quality's oversight as unreliable.
Lacking money for their own extensive study has left them with little scientific ammunition to reply. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has declined their appeals to intervene.
"The base isn't taking the hard look needed to find contamination," said Dan L. Alstott, who lives on the river's scenic north branch in Lovells.
Alstott founded the Au Sable Manistee Action Council more than a decade ago, as a citizen outlet to protest camp noise and pollution problems.
"When you drop a 500-pound bomb, it leaves all kinds of residues in the soil," he said. "Have they actually tested the bomb craters, or do they put their test wells where it's most convenient?"
Unlike clay and silty soils found in many other parts of Michigan, Grayling's soil consists chiefly of coarse sands, which allow water to rapidly percolate and even flow horizontally within the deeper aquifer.
The end result, say critics, is that pollution becomes hard to pinpoint and can migrate over time -- that chemicals from Range 40 may ultimately be moving targets.
"We're convinced that there is contamination, but proving that is extremely difficult," said Dr. Niles Kevern, a Michigan State University biologist familiar with the river. "It raises a lot of questions. This problem is complex and scientifically subtle."
Kevern, Alstott and others are tracking pollution problems unearthed at the Massachusetts Military Reservation on Cape Cod. There, citizen outrage prodded U.S. Army officials to admit that firing ranges are a likely source of serious water contamination.
Since March, monitoring wells on the Cape Cod ranges have revealed high levels of RDX, or Royal Dutch Explosive, which led to the Army's recent statement.
Regardless of the continuing national debate, this weekend 3,800 members of Michigan's Army National Guard are scheduled to arrive for training at Camp Grayling.
They will be followed in July by 3,100 Ohio Guardsmen, before more Michigan soldiers and units of the U.S. Marine Corps Reserve come later in August. Smaller contingents are expected from Canada and Latvia as part of an international military exchange program.
Grayling remains the lone Midwest training ground where part-time and reserve units can patrol, bivouac and shoot with almost limitless horizons. The camp's size pushes 230 square miles.
Out-of-state units often leave their tanks and personnel carriers year-round at the camp, which has served as a military training ground in different forms since 1916.
"Before this squabble, the base had no environmental conscience whatsoever," said Rusty Gates, owner of Gates' Au Sable Lodge, a landmark for fly-fishing anglers on the river. "That's one tremendous thing to come out of this."
Still, when eight 500-pound bombs were dropped by Ohio Air National Guard aircraft two months ago, the explosions surprised some residents who complained about broken windows and other damage to houses in the past.
"The same planes dropped a whole bunch of 500-pounders just last year, but it wasn't here, it wasn't over Grayling," said Lt. Col. Lamie, the camp's second-in-command. "They dropped them over Kosovo."
* The Michigan National Guard: Officials say Michigan's Camp Grayling is a safe and unique area for live-fire training critical to national defense. Their tests reflect no harmful effects from ordnance to area water. New camp policies have been adopted to safeguard the environment.
* Local residents, environmental groups: They question the
camp's self-testing for pollution, and charge that chemicals from shells are
contaminating rivers and ground water. Others complain of noise, damage to houses
and risks to residents' safety.
© Copyright 2001, Anglers of the Au Sable, Inc. All rights reserved. Last modified April 12, 2001