Weldon Spring wildlife area

[cherry63376]

Does anyone know about an abandonded water reservor in ground tank at the bush wild life area. I found it on http://local.live.com/ I went and found it and took pictures. http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y300/c ... prings.jpg
This is what it looks like on local . live
http://local.live.com/default.aspx?v=2& ... &encType=1

http://local.live.com/default.aspx?v=2& ... &encType=1

This thing is about fifty feet across and fifty feet deep.
Just below it is a pump station.

[memory_machine]

There is a lot of good stuff in that general vicinity. It used to be part of what was known as Weldon Spring Ordinance Works Mechanical City. There was a lot of processing of munitions for WWII there. I haven't seen the spot you're talking about, but I have been all through the old power building you can see from you link on live local. It's directly north west of the water basin thing.

[crazydrummerdude]

There is a lot of good stuff in that general vicinity. It used to be part of what was known as Weldon Spring Ordinance Works Mechanical City. There was a lot of processing of munitions for WWII there. I haven't seen the spot you're talking about, but I have been all through the old power building you can see from you link on live local. It's directly north west of the water basin thing.

Thank you for saying this. I was looking for something to do today, and went to that "power building" about 10 minutes after I read this. That place is sweet!

[memory_machine]

Yeah, it's completely empty and totally run down, but still pretty cool to see...how there's just this huge building in the woods.

[cherry63376]

I would like to see that power building. I am very familiar with this area but do not know of this building. Could you give me an ideal where I would look?

[memory_machine]

Does anyone know about an abandonded water reservor in ground tank at the bush wild life area. I found it on http://local.live.com/ I went and found it and took pictures. http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y300/c ... prings.jpg
This is what it looks like on local . live
http://local.live.com/default.aspx?v=2& ... &encType=1

http://local.live.com/default.aspx?v=2& ... &encType=1

This thing is about fifty feet across and fifty feet deep.
Just below it is a pump station.

Check out the maps here. It is directly north west of the spot being talked about, and you can see it on that last link.

[Chris]

This it?

http://local.live.com/default.aspx?v=2& ... &encType=1

[memory_machine]

That'd be the one.

[crazydrummerdude]

Oh, man, though... Maybe we took the longest freaking route possible, but it was a bitch to secretly access. Then again, this is a good thing, as it isn't covered in graffiti..

[memory_machine]

Yeah, it's actually on government property. That's a Army Reserve/National Guard training area. Yeeha!

[redox]

Cool, havn't seen that stuff yet. I checked out tonns of old ammo bunkers near there, but I had no idea that reservoir and power station were there. Thanks.

[squabbit]

You guys might want to bring your Geiger counters next time. That whole area was/is seriously fucking contaminated. They were doing lots of work with Uranium there for Mallinkrodt and the Manhattan project during WWII. There is also serious heavy metal contamination and different compounds from explosives. Much of the area was (is?) a superfund site. I know that they stashed TONS of contaminated toxic and radioactive waste into a giant underground bladder years ago as part of cleanup efforts, but I would not be messing around in abandoned buildings or pools of water out there. I know they say it is cleaned up, but the DOD and the EPA have versions of "Clean" that don't really jive with reality. On the bright side, you might get superhuman powers or grow an extra head or something cool like that. Or you might just get cancer.

[Former User #1]

True. One of my good friends grew up really close to there and got bone cancer when he was a baby. It was a nasty place.

[memory_machine]

The levels of contamination are negligable if one only visits for a short time. Radioactive contamination is something that becomes more and more harmful the longer you are exposed to it, it's not like asbestos where it can be a one time thing. That's why, in the military, soldiers carry dosimeters so they know exactly how much exposure they've had.

It's really not a big deal. For the love of God, people are visiting Chernobyl again on a regular basis. They just don't stay long and stay away from the main reactor where the levels are highest. I'm pretty darn sure hanging out in Weldon Spring is okay. Still, I wouldn't drink the water.

[crazydrummerdude]

(The Chernobyl thing... I think is complete bullshit. I know there are websites where people claim to ride their motorcycles through there, but that's a bit of a stretch. After it happened, and after the whole place was sealed off (which is starting to fail, by the way), people were still dying off left and right.)

The day after I went there, I was given a tour of that "bladder." Inside it is basically everything associated with the radioactive mumbojumbo.. including all the factories, machinery, and all the junk that people (back in the day) dumped into a nearby quarry. There have been thousands of tests of radioactivity in the area, and nothing is above current, normal background radiation.

I don't want to nit-pick, but I will just share what I learned on this tour.. I am pretty sure the Ordinance Works was never involved with the Manhattan project. They just made a bunch of other explosives. During the cold war, they switched things up with Uranium, and after that, they were going to produce Agent Orange, until the gov. moved it's focus to a sister-site in Ohio.

The EPA deemed that 5,000 units (I forgot what it was called) of radiation per year was safe for humans. Even the guys in the job, (taking all the waste, rounding it up, and burying it in it's own 50ish acre capsule at the remediation site) only had a record of about 150 units a year.

I think that there are bigger things to worry about when out there; asbestos, breaking your leg, and/or getting caught. Again, radiation contamination is only felt in VERY long terms with radiation this low (aka... at background levels, we could live our entire life out there and die of old age before feeling even the smallest effect of radiation).