The Army will be embarking on groundbreaking studies of deep-water chemical munitions dumped off O'ahu's south coast after World War II, as well as testing underwater robots to remove conventional bombs littering shallow waters off Wai'anae, an Army official said yesterday.

"This is the most comprehensive effort that's ever been undertaken (in the nation) to address this issue," said Tad Davis, the Army's deputy assistant secretary for the environment.

Information gained may give officials a clearer picture of the deep-water ordnance and its condition after decades in the ocean, but there has been no talk of a deep-water cleanup.

The Army said it is spending $4.75 million to investigate the removal of the near-shore munitions, and $2.3 million for the deep-water investigation — figures that likely will increase as the efforts continue.

State Senate President Colleen Hanabusa, D-21st (Nanakuli, Makaha), said she is pleased the government efforts are not only continuing, but are expanding with the deep-water study.

A two-week study of the shallow-water area off Wai'anae known as "Ordnance Reef" was conducted in 2006 by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

"One of the things that the Army, in my opinion, has always avoided (in the past) is the deep-water issue," Hanabusa said. "(The Army took the position) it's deep water, and therefore it may be more problematic to even study it than it is to just let it be."

But the Army now plans to partner with the University of Hawai'i to use its two submersibles and a remotely-operated vehicle to investigate the dumped munitions that are in more than 1,000 feet of water south of O'ahu.

"At least we'll know in better detail what is out there," Hanabusa said.

The Army is responsible for cleanup of old military munitions, regardless of which branch of the service they originated from.

A fiscal 2007 report to Congress said 2,558 tons of chemical agents were dumped at three sites off O'ahu, including lewisite, mustard, cyanogen chloride and cyanide.

Included in the deadly ordnance dump were 15,000 M70 115-pound mustard bombs, 1,100 M79 1,000-pound cyanogen chloride bombs and 20 M79 1,000-pound cyanide rounds.

The Army said the weapons are in waters 1,200 to 10,000 feet deep between five and 10 miles south of Pearl Harbor and Wai'anae.

In January or February, UH's Hawai'i Undersea Research Laboratory plans to use submersibles Pisces IV and Pisces V and a remotely-operated vehicle to examine some of the dumped chemical weapons and gather data, including water and sediment samples, to determine the effect seawater and more than 60 years have had on the munitions.

"It will be a visual inspection and taking the samples," Davis said.

Davis said side-scan sonar already has been used to look for anomalies that represent munitions deposits.

In its 28 years of submersible use, UH's undersea research lab has found plenty of ordnance, said Terry Kerby, its director of facilities and submersible operations and the program's chief pilot.

Kerby said some have exhibited a green band — one of the indicators of chemical weapons — but he also said a lot of the ordnance is corroded and difficult to identify.

Although the Army has archival records of the dump sites, Kerby said the munitions were disposed of over a long period, "so you are not going to find a big pile of munitions on the bottom."

The weapons also likely drifted on currents, he said.

"And nobody really knows, when these guys went out on these barges, did they go all the way out to the designated site, or did they stop when they got a few miles offshore and get rid of it?" Kerby said.

COMMON PRACTICE

The fiscal 2007 report to Congress notes that chemical agents including sarin, VX, phosgene and others also were dumped at 11 sites off the Atlantic coast, as well as at sites off the Caribbean, Pacific, Gulf and Alaska coasts.

The Army's Davis said that at the end of World War II, the country had a huge stockpile of conventional and chemical munitions.

"We were basically a machine, just burning and churning munitions and moving stuff forward," he said.

When the war ended, there were two methods of getting rid of chemical weapons: burying them or dumping them in deep water. Davis said the thinking at the time was that hydrolysis and the sheer volume of water would take care of the problem.

The sea dumping continued into the early 1970s with the Navy taking old Liberty ships, filling them with munitions and sinking them, Davis said.

Approximately 18 Liberty ships were sunk, including four containing chemical weapons, he said. The only investigation of chemical weapons dumped in deep water was in the mid-1970s when two of the ships sunk off the East Coast were looked at, but Davis said those are nowhere near as old as the dump sites off O'ahu.

"That's really why I want to push this thing — so we can get down there and do the work we're talking about (off O'ahu) because in many cases these munitions have been down there since the mid to late '40s, and nobody's looked at them," Davis said.

'A BIG STEP FORWARD'

Additional environmental efforts, including shellfish and limu studies, are planned for the five-mile area known as Ordnance Reef off the Wai'anae Coast because it is so littered with munitions.

J.C. King, assistant for munitions and chemical matters with the Army, said the plan is to clean up the ordnance down to 120 feet — the depth that can be reached by sport scuba divers — unless there is a reason not to remove it.

In about a year, the Army expects to start with a demonstration project to see how munitions can be safely collected using remotely-operated vehicles and removed from concreted coral and sediment.

The approach being favored for the latter is to use the underwater vehicles and cutting tools similar to those used on oil rigs.

Davis said the environmental harm that may be caused to coral by removing munitions will have to be weighed against the necessity to remove it, but coral regrowth efforts will be possible.

The Army also plans to work with NOAA to place two monitoring buoys in about 350 feet of water off Wai'anae where munitions will remain, and in a deep water site with chemical munitions.

The buoys will check water currents and help predict the direction a chemical or conventional weapon release would drift, officials said.

Davis met with the Wai'anae and Ma'ili neighborhood boards last night to discuss the plans. The community and Hawai'i's congressional delegation have pushed the munitions cleanup forward, officials said.

Wai'anae Coast activist William Aila Jr. also credits the Army's Davis, who has met regularly with Wai'anae Coast residents over the past several years.

"The community is driving it, and he (Davis) is sort of co-driving it, I would say, in terms of having a reasonable analysis and a reasonable plan to deal with it," Aila said. "This is a big step forward in terms of the analysis and removal of ordnance."