The amphibious transport dock ship USS New York fires its MK46 30mm gun during a live-fire exercise into the Potomac River. As the Navy is moving to expand its test range, moving it closer to the Maryland shore, two environmental groups are suing the Navy and alleging it failed to abide by the Clean Water Act, which requires anyone discharging pollutants into a river to get a permit, and to regularly test the water to ensure it is safe for humans and wildlife. (Cyrus Roson/U.S. Navy)
At a bend in the Potomac River about 50 miles south of Washington, a Navy base sits next to the small town of Dahlgren, Va. On the base is the Naval Surface Warfare Center, where beginning in 1918, the Navy has tested large-caliber weapons and explosives by firing them into the Potomac.
By the Navy’s own count, it fired about 33 million pounds of ordnance into the river in the first 90 years of operation, including 225 tons of the toxic heavy metal manganese and 15,000 tons of iron. It is still testing today. Vast, thunderous explosions in the water are commonplace to residents, boaters and watermen who make their living in or near the more than 50-mile stretch of the Potomac River Test Range. The Navy calls it “the nation’s largest fully instrumented over-water gun-firing range.”
Now, as the Navy is moving to expand its test range, moving it closer to the Maryland shore, two environmental groups are suing the Navy and alleging it failed to abide by the Clean Water Act, which requires anyone discharging pollutants into a river to get a permit, and to regularly test the water to ensure it is safe for humans and wildlife. The suit was filed Wednesday in federal court in Maryland, because Maryland has jurisdiction over the Potomac almost up to the Virginia waterline, and it seeks an order forcing the Navy to apply for a permit from the Maryland Department of the Environment, which would then require the Navy to comply with dumping and other pollution regulations and laws.
The suit was filed by the Potomac Riverkeeper Network and the Natural Resources Defense Council. Dean Naujoks, the Lower Potomac riverkeeper, said the group initially tried to meet with the Navy last year but was rebuffed. After the riverkeepers organization and NRDC sent a five-page letter in January expressing their intent to sue, the Navy met with them and a number of watermen from Virginia and Maryland, Naujoks said.
The Navy has reported it fires about 4,700 projectiles per year into the river, and conducts at least 200 detonation events per year, sometimes fired from weapons on land, with others fired from barges, drones, helicopters or boats.
Naujoks said the Navy agreed to protect endangered species in the river such as Atlantic sturgeon, but made no commitment to other species. “It’s kind of ironic,” Naujoks said, “that they agreed they had some impact on endangered species, but there isn’t an impact that requires them to get a Clean Water Act permit.”
When contacted by The Washington Post, the Navy said that it does not comment on pending litigation.
The Navy did a large environmental impact study in 2013 that considered, among other things, whether substances contained in the munitions posed a risk. The Navy said it performed “modeled concentrations,” or estimates, on the water and fish, and “concentrations are considered to be at acceptable levels and no further evaluation is required.”
NRDC officials say that effort was not adequate. At the meeting earlier this year, the Navy declined to tell the NRDC whether it had actually tested any water in the river, an NRDC official said.
“The Navy has never performed any water quality monitoring or sediment sampling,” the lawsuit alleges, “to understand the impact of its weapons testing activities on the Potomac River’s ecosystem and water quality or on public health.”
In the study, it became clear the Navy has closely charted every round it has fired into the Potomac since 1918, when it launched its first test: a 153-pound projectile that was fired from a big gun and traveled 11 miles. Up through 2007, the Navy had tested nearly 292,000 inert rounds and 52,000 live, large-caliber rounds, according to the impact study.
Within one 2.3-square-mile area of the testing range, called the “dense zone,” the Navy estimated about 160,000 rounds had landed and settled on the bottom of the river, “yielding a density of 69,686 rounds per nautical square mile.”
The Navy’s 2013 study posited that the munitions were simply sinking into muddy sediment at the bottom of the river, and gradually disintegrating. “That cannot be accurate,” Naujoks said. He pointed to the large projectile pulled out of the water in 2020, as well as National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration mapping of the main Potomac channel that shows the bottom is composed of hard clay, not muddy sediment. Numerous watermen have reported pulling up munitions in their nets over the years, Naujoks said.
People who make a living by working the Potomac along Virginia’s Northern Neck and in southern Maryland along Charles and St. Mary’s counties, are concerned about any potential harm to fish or shellfish, said J.C. Hudgins, president of the Virginia Watermen’s Association.
“What are they going to put in the water?” Hudgins said he asked of the Navy. “They won’t tell us exactly what they’re going to do.”
Naujoks said environmental testing is expensive, particularly searching for elements such as selenium, arsenic and mercury often associated with metals or using sonar to examine the river bottom. “Why should the Potomac Riverkeepers have to pay for that?” he asked. “When a Clean Water Act permit is issued, then there will be limits” on pollution and requirements for monitoring.
When the weapons testing is happening, typically between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. on weekdays, the Navy shuts down the 50-mile stretch of river, or forces boats to tack closely to the Maryland shore, which Hudgins said is shallow. “Our main concern is access,” he said, fearing that the proposed expanded range would reach across the entire river and block passage entirely.
The base is located just north of the resort town of Colonial Beach, Va.
It is near the Harry Nice Memorial Bridge, the Route 301 crossing between Virginia and Maryland. Naujoks noted that when it was determined that the pile-driving for a new bridge was disturbing the environment, Maryland ordered the state transportation department to stop the pounding from January to June to reduce its impact.
The letter to the Navy pointed out that the Clean Water Act prohibits the discharge of any pollutant into navigable waters unless authorized by a “National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System” permit, or unless the president grants an exemption. “The release of ordnance from aircraft or from ships into navigable waters is a discharge of pollutants,” a federal court ruled in 1982.
The base in King George County, Va., formally called Naval Support Facility Dahlgren, is also an EPA Superfund pollution cleanup site. Its 1,600-acre “explosive experimental area” experienced “accidental spills, leaks, and conventional waste disposal practices before the 1980s,” according to a Navy update on the cleanup, and was added to the Superfund National Priorities List in 1992. The Navy is still remediating the site today, and its most recent report says that “There is no disposal of ordnance or explosive hazardous waste at the [Explosives Experiment Area]; these items are disposed of at permitted facilities located outside of the Naval Support Facility Dahlgren.”
