It doesn't look like much from the road, but a little plot of land in Butler County once played a big role in America's Cold War-era defense system.
The Army Corps of Engineers is working to remediate the 14-acre area northwest of Oxford and asking neighboring community members for input on how they'd like to receive information about the project.
USACE Project Manager Randall Russell explains the site's fascinating past.
"The Nike CD-78 site, as we typical call it, is a former launch area for a Nike-Hercules missile battery to provide air defense for the Cincinnati and Dayton areas," he says.
Randall says the federal government built the site in the late 1950s and decommissioned it in 1970. It was one of 145 Nike installations nationwide, including 11 in Ohio and five in Indiana, designed to protect major population areas and military targets from Soviet air attack. The "CD" portion of the name refers to "Cincinnati-Dayton." Other sites around Cleveland were given a "CL" designation.
Miami University has owned the property since its retirement as a military installation. The university uses it for research and storage. It also has served as a small-arms firing range for local law enforcement.
The area is now part of what is called the Formerly Used Defense Sites Program, or FUDS. Under that program, the Army Corps filled in the underground missile storage and began monitoring groundwater in 2009.
There are two parts of the site. One held administrative buildings. The other held the missile battery. The latter has continued to have some groundwater pollution issues, which the USACE has been addressing with an approach called monitored natural attenuation.
Under that process, engineers track the natural breakdown of contaminants and keep tabs on them to make sure they're not spreading. They're also tracking how long the pollutants take to break down.
Russell says USACE is looking into whether to use other cleanup techniques.
"We're in the middle of a study to see if we can find other ways to achieve a more timely response," he says.
Russell says previous investigations into the environmental impacts of the missile site didn't find any other kinds of pollution in soil — only groundwater issues. Under current conditions, Russell says USACE expects the cleanup to wrap up over the course of a decade, though there are a lot of variables at play.
In the meantime, USACE sent out letters and surveys last month asking surrounding community members how they'd like to be notified about updates on the cleanup project. They'll take that input until the end of March and use it to draw up a plan for engaging the public, Russell says.
Once a FUDS area is free of contamination, it can fully revert to private development. That's led to some creative reuses in other places. One site originally designed to protect Greater Cincinnati in Dillsboro, Indiana, for example, is now a private home — complete with a pool, sauna and other amenities in one of its three intact missile silos.
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