NAC 6 Minutes 10/18/04

PRESENT: Katherine Jones, Trish Cunningham, Paul Dienes, Sara McGill, Dan Beins, Lisa and Randy Grove, Pat McGuire. A number of neighbors were present, including Mayor Dougherty.

Colonel Ball gave a presentation and answered many challenging questions about the expansion and development planned for Fort Detrick. Ft. Detrick made a strategic decision that they could best control security at the 7^th Street gate, and so decided to make the improvements at that gate. They believe the improvements being made to take the traffic off of 7^th and onto the base at that gate will reduce the traffic problems.

The Rosemont Gate was closed when it did not meet security standards. May open on a limited access basis.

The Opposumtown Gate is closed until Friday. That should relieve some of the traffic problems, but it is not planned to be a major access point.

The Fort may decide that the 7^th Street Gate will not be a 24-hour gate. They may decide that they will “encourage” residents and employees with Ft. Detrick security stickers to use the other gates when those gates are open, in order to reduce traffic on 7^th Street, but Colonel Ball would not commit to what that “encouragement” might entail.

There was a discussion about possible “noise barriers” that had been planned for the 7^th Street gate. These had been called, in past meetings, noise barriers, as well as shrapnel barriers (or some such). The point of these barrier walls seemed to originally have been to reduce the impact of the noise of the traffic waiting in the holding area, and to reduce the impact on neighbors of any explosions or shooting that might occur in this area. At this time, Ft. Detrick does not have the funding to build these barriers, or to make them quite as secure as they seemed to have been intended in the initial planning. Colonel Ball was anxious to reassure us that the chances of anyone being hurt in any incident at this holding area was less than the chance of being struck by a meteor.

They will be boosting security in the area in 2 years.

There will be a presentation at Strough Auditorium on 10/26/04 at 7:00 p.m. for all the neighbors, and city residents, not just NAC 6.