Aberdeen Proving Ground, which has some of the worst pollution problems of any U.S. military base, wants public participation in an extensive environmental study of its research and testing missions.
The $6.6 million study will be the subject of five public meetings in Baltimore, Cecil, Harford and Kent counties. The first meeting is Tuesday.
"We are looking at the cumulative impacts, which we've never really done before," said Edward L. Newel, an Aberdeen environmental official who is supervising the study with assistance from Argonne National Laboratory.
Citizens throughout the region continually press the Army about the environmental effects of dozens of missions at the 72,000-acre base, which stretches along the Chesapeake Bay from near Havre de Grace south to near Chase.
The Army estimates the cost of cleaning up waste dumping and other environmental problems at about $1 billion. In an April 1994 study, the General Accounting Office, an investigative arm of Congress, said the cleanup cost could be as high as $4 billion.
Aberdeen's current missions and activities include constant testing of large-caliber munitions, including mildly radioactive depleted uranium weapons; the cleanup of some of the estimated 25 million spent munitions from more than 75 years of testing; the use of a huge man-made pond for conducting tests for the Navy on the effects of underwater explosions; research into chemical and biological warfare defense; and disposal of a 1,500-ton stockpile of mustard agent by incineration or other means.
A Joppa-based citizen group that monitors Aberdeen's environmental cleanup recently joined similar organizations across the country in a federal lawsuit to force the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate military munitions testing. They say the testing contaminates the Chesapeake and other U.S. waterways and poses other environmental risks.
Lawyers with the University of Maryland's Environmental Law Clinic in Baltimore, which is representing the citizen groups, said last week that they hope to settle the suit soon.
Mr. Newel said the Army environmental study, to be completed by the summer of 1996, is unique among U.S. military installations in its scale and use of computer technology to give the public more participation.
An electronic mail system -- the address is APGEIMTPLINK.EAD.ANL.GOV -- has been established so the public can offer comments by computer. And officials are considering making draft or final documents available on XTC computer disk or CD-ROM for access at public libraries or on home computers.
MEETING SCHEDULE
* TUESDAY, 6:30 P.M., at Oliver Beach Elementary School, 12912 Cunninghill Cove Road, Chase, Baltimore County.
* THURSDAY, 6:30 p.m., at Aberdeen High School, 251 Paradise Road, Aberdeen.
* FEB. 28, 6:30 p.m., at Perryville High, 1696 Perryville Road, Perryville.
* MARCH 2, 3:30 p.m., in Washington College's Hodson Hall in Chestertown, Kent County.
* MARCH 7, 6:30 p.m., at Edgewood High, 2415 Willoughby Beach Road, Edgewood.