The Department of Housing and Public Works’ Environmental Management division has started monitoring old West Point landfills in accordance with federal environmental laws.

The law, instituted in 1984, is called the Hazardous and Solid Waste Amendments Act.

Bill Busko, a DHPW environmental engineer, said that none of the 20 inactive landfills across the post contain any hazardous materials.

"Many of these landfills were active during the middle decades of the 20th century and contain metals and construction debris," he said.

After more than seven years of testing numerous materials, Busko said, DHPW has amassed volumes of information on what is beneath West Point’s soil.

Busko explained that the metals appearing in the highest concentration are iron and manganese and some of that is inherently native to the ground material in the area.

"Environmental regulators consider these metals to be the least problematic materials [to be found in the area] for peoples’ health," he said.

Busko said the landfills in question have been out of use since the 1970s and the majority of them have since been converted into parking lots.

West Point will begin a long-term monitoring plan this fall, he said, to review remedial cleanup technologies in use at the academy.

Busko explained that the long-term plan consists mainly of water sampling to determine the effectiveness of "capping" landfills with parking lots.