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Published: 2001

Total Pages: 42

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Environmental awareness and stewardship was not a priority in Army installations and operations until the 1990s. Today's public environmental awareness and growing concern for public health and natural resources has called some past military training practices into question as potential sources of environmental contamination. One such military installation with a legacy of environmental contamination is the Massachusetts Military Reservation (MMR) located on Cape Cod Massachusetts, a military training facility for over ninety years. The analysis of the MMR legacy is critical for two reasons: (1) past training and safety procedures caused contamination that spread beyond installation boundaries via an underlying sole source aquifer; and (2) the Army handling of this legacy ultimately resulted in an EPA Administrative Order that indefinitely suspended artillery, mortar, and demolition training at MMR. The ultimate lesson of MMR is the sustainment of a well-prepared Army cannot exist without environmental stewardship.