The residential area of Spring Valley encompasses approximately six hundred sixty-one (661) acres in the northwest section of Washington, D.C. During World War I, Spring Valley was known as the American University Experimental Station and Camp Leach. The chemists and engineers of Camp Leach produced an arsenic based chemical agent, Lewsite, and the Army trained soldiers in the use of this chemical agent in the area of Spring Valley, D.C. This area is currently undergoing remediation efforts to remove arsenic from the soil. The main remediation technology to be applied at residences with elevated arsenic is excavation followed by landfilling with clean soil. Because excavation and landfilling can be environmentally disruptive and expensive, phytoremediation is being considered as an alternative in several elevated grids of Spring Valley to minimize destruction of existing trees and reduce restoration costs. Work commenced in 2003-2004 with a laboratory feasibility study followed by a field verification study. The field verification study was expanded in 2005 from 14 sites to 25 sites and additional fern species were added. This paper will report on the second year of the study and include a comparison of the performance of the different fern species as well as the performance of overwintering ferns in their second year of growth.
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