Fort Reno Park Closed Over Arsenic Concerns

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SPENDING TIME in one of the many parks in the District can be good for your head. Unless that park is Fort Reno. Then, not so much — it's been closed by the National Park Service due to levels of arsenic in the soil that exceed federal safety standards.

In a statement released Wednesday, the park service said it closed Fort Reno, located on Nebraska Avenue NW near Tenleytown, at 6 a.m. after it received word from the U.S. Geological Survey that satellite imaging reports "that the Fort Reno Park grounds contain arsenic levels in the soil and that the levels revealed in the USGS report exceed the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) safety threshold."

The imaging took place, the statement said, as part of the USGS's "on-going work in the Spring Valley section of upper Northwest Washington with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers."

The statement went on to indicate that the findings were a little unexpected.

"The only time the NPS would conduct field soil sampling or soil testing on national park lands is when it knows of or suspects there has been a release into the environment. The NPS had no prior reason to suspect anything other than safe conditions existed in Fort Reno Park."

» Fort Reno [NPS.gov]