Transcripts

MARTIN KASTE: It took over $200,000, a barge load of Navy divers, and an underwater robot, but the Army Corps of Engineers got what it wanted-- samples from all three sites in Lake Superior, where barrels were dumped. Army Corps of Engineers spokesman Bob Dempsey showed off a table full of the results.

BOB DEMPSEY: Ash, melted aluminum kind of a slag material. And we weren't really sure what we had when we picked these barrels up, but we sifted through at least one of them and found the material that's on the end of the table there, which included a Honeywell coffee cup. So that pretty much gave us an idea of where this stuff came from.

MARTIN KASTE: The barrels came from the Twin Cities Army Ammunition Plant in Arden Hills and New Brighton, where the Honeywell Corporation manufactured top-secret grenades and cluster bombs for the military. But the Army isn't blaming Honeywell. Dempsey admits using Lake Superior as a dump was the Army's idea.

BOB DEMPSEY: That's why we're out here and probably why we haven't been putting Honeywell on the spot for this recovery. I think everything I've seen in the historical record indicates that the Army, AMC [? com ?] out of Rock Island selected this disposal method. It was not Honeywell.

MARTIN KASTE: The Army Corps hasn't found anything toxic inside the barrels yet. So far, they've identified inert grenade parts and other odds and ends from the factory floor. There's still some doubt about an unidentified sludge found in three of the barrels. The corps is withholding judgment on that until lab tests come back in a few weeks.

Ultimately, it's up to the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency to decide when to stop worrying about the Lake Superior barrels. They're the ones who pushed the Army into sending the corps after the barrels this year. MPCA spokesman Ron Swenson seems reluctant to close any options.

RON SWENSON: There might be something out there that was thrown overboard years ago. And the lake is a great preserver, but a barrel might give up its contents eventually. So there might be something out there. We don't know.

MARTIN KASTE: Swenson and the Navy divers say they were surprised at the amount of man-made debris they found scattered across the bottom of Lake Superior. After the salvage crew hauled up its last barrel yesterday, it spent some time on one of the more interesting pieces of lake bottom junk-- a shipwreck spotted by sonar during last year's barrel hunt.

Army Corps Maritime historian Pat Labadie says he's been studying the videotape made by the Navy robot yesterday to try to figure out the story behind the wreck.

PAT LABADIE: Based on what I'm seeing here, we couldn't find any evidence of rigging that indicates a sailing craft. The hull is very narrow and very fine, very lightly built, which suggests a yacht-like design. And here and there, there are details, like the design of the transom stern and some of the fixtures on the bow, on the stem, which are not common to commercial craft, but fancy and suggest to a yacht.

MARTIN KASTE: Labadie says the wreck might be that of the [? Furion, ?] a 120-foot pleasure craft that burned and sank near Duluth in May of 1926. Labadie says the 400-foot-deep wreck is a historical curiosity, but he says he doubts any of it is worth salvaging. This is Martin Kaste, Minnesota Public Radio, Duluth.