Six months after the record flooding from the remnants of Hurricane Helene, the Radford Army Ammunition Plant is still searching for four totes carrying toxic chemicals that were released into the New River.
Floodwaters ripped open the doors of a warehouse at the plant and swept 13 containers filled with dibutyl phthalate into the New River, which crested at 31 feet on Sept. 28, 17 feet above flood stage and the second highest crest on record. Arsenal officials said at a Feb. 26 virtual community meeting that the river was flowing at 34 times its usual flow rate.
“To reiterate, this was the worst event noted in the history of the facility and the worst flood event on record since 1940, which was a year before the facility was constructed,” said Nelson Hernandez, environmental manager with BAE Systems, the company that runs the arsenal.
Each tank contained 275 gallons of dibutyl phthalate, and at least three of the containers are known to have been damaged and released their contents — one of which is believed to have been emptied intentionally by a resident who found it, according to a DEQ official.
The cumulative volume of the release was 1,575 gallons, Hernandez said. Officials shared with residents a description of the totes, which are plastic containers surrounded by metal cages.
Dibutyl phthalate has been connected to decreased fertility as well as liver and kidney toxicity. But because of the volume and the speed at which the water was moving, officials at the recent community meeting compared the concentration of the chemical in the river to “a sugar cube in a medium-sized residential pool.”
There were three other reported discharges related to the flooding, according to Julia Raimondi, communications coordinator with the Department of Environmental Quality: a calcium sulfate sludge discharge, a treated-wastewater overflow, and diesel fuel spills from multiple sources.
“Due to the historic volume of water flow of the New River, any discharges of calcium sulfate or diesel fuel would have quickly diffused and no cleanup possible,” Justine Barati, director of public and congressional affairs at the Joint Munitions Command, said after the meeting.
Officials maintained at the virtual community meeting that “public health was not jeopardized, and there were no observed impacts to the environment.”
During a Nov. 7 in-person community meeting, residents were frustrated that they had not learned of the chemical release until six weeks after it had happened — “I’m furious,” resident Georgia Doremus said at that meeting.
In the recent community meeting, officials stated that notifications were sent from the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality to state offices. Raimondi said that the Virginia Department of Health had issued a special advisory to avoid flood waters.
A graphic shared during the meeting showed what the four months of “continuous search” for the remaining missing totes has looked like. There was a brief pause in the search at the end of last year while the arsenal contracted for search services, Raimondi said.
This process included scouring 67 miles of river by boat and helicopter, 13 square miles by foot and 60 square miles by drone. Twenty-two local and state first responders and agencies were contracted to help.
The arsenal is still searching for the four missing containers. Beth Lohman, environmental emergency manager with the DEQ, said the arsenal will continue the search “for the next year if not longer.” Barati did not answer when asked how much the search had cost thus far.
Hernandez said the arsenal will continue to work with the Army to “modernize” the facility to avoid similar incidents in the future. Funding for these improvements is included in the $125 million emergency relief funding approved by Congress in December.
Barati said the Army has also requested to move several “planned modernization projects” forward, most of which are included in the modernization plan submitted to Congress. These projects include relocating several buildings outside the flood zone and “construction of new technologies and equipment in higher locations,” Barati said.
This is not the first time the arsenal has been flagged by DEQ for environmental violations.
The facility was fined multiple times between 2012 and 2024 for releasing toxins at levels exceeding the regulated amounts. Raimondi said the DEQ issued the facility a warning letter on Jan. 30, 2025, regarding issues from a July 2024 routine hazardous waste permit inspection. DEQ received a response from the facility over a year later, and the department will be conducting a follow-up inspection this week.
Last week, an explosion occurred at the facility. The blast was confined to one building, and nobody was injured. The incident is being investigated by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
Some residents are still expressing concerns with how the post-Helene search is being handled.
During the recent virtual meeting, frustration flooded the comment section on the Facebook livestream, some calling for the creation of a citizen board.
“Can you please explain the statu[t]es or laws in place for not informing the public? And now you’re asking us for help finding it?” one resident asked in the chat.
Members of a private Facebook group called Citizens for Arsenal Accountability often post about the arsenal’s community meetings and discuss concerns about hazardous waste.
The day after the February community meeting, Alyssa Carpenter, an administrator of the Facebook page, posted that “the facility continued to use the flow rate of the river as a means to dismiss the problem of losing 13 toxic chemical totes.”
“And all this facility wants to do is fail to take accountability that these measures should have (and are required to) be in place prior to such an event,” her post reads. “In real life, our community members are draining totes because they had no idea what it was or what to do about it.”
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Correction, 12 p.m. March 6: The Department of Environmental Quality issued the Radford Army Ammunition Plant a warning letter on Jan. 30, 2025, regarding issues from a July 2024 routine hazardous waste permit inspection. The date of the letter was incorrect in an earlier version of this story.