Question 1

What data does the Nelson military contaminated sites map show?

Accepted Answer

Two public records on one canvas. In the United States, the Formerly Used Defense Sites property inventory published by the US Army Corps of Engineers, covering land the Department of Defense owned or controlled before October 1986. In Canada, sites in the Federal Contaminated Sites Inventory where National Defence is the custodian. Nelson compiles and plots the published records and does not create, model, or estimate any of them.

Question 2

Where do the contamination type counts come from?

Accepted Answer

On the United States side, from the restoration category the Corps publishes on each project: military munitions, chemical warfare materiel, hazardous and toxic waste, containerised waste, and demolition debris. On the Canadian side, from the contaminants of concern the custodian records on each site. Nelson groups those published values into ordnance and fuels or solvents for comparison, and keeps the original category on every site record.

Question 3

Which defence sites are flagged as possible AFFF locations?

Accepted Answer

Properties in the military record that pair with a PFAS record describing the same ground, matched on distance and shared name terms in the shared AFFF overlap layer. A pairing is a correspondence between two published records, not a finding that firefighting foam was used or released at that property.

Question 4

Can I see programme status per property?

Accepted Answer

Yes. Every named property carries its published programme status, and United States properties expand to show each restoration project with its category, phase, remedy in place or response complete year, recorded area, munitions risk value, and cost to complete where the Corps publishes it.

Question 5

Are active military bases included?

Accepted Answer

Active United States installations are not in the Formerly Used Defense Sites record, which by definition covers property no longer under Department of Defense control. Canadian National Defence sites in the federal inventory can include land at operating establishments, so the two layers stay separate rather than being merged into one continent wide census.

Question 6

How current is the military site data?

Accepted Answer

The map reports the generation date of the compiled files. Both agencies republish their inventories periodically, so the map is a snapshot of the published record at that date. Records without usable coordinates stay in the source files and are not drawn, so plotted counts read as a floor.

Military contaminated sites map: FUDS and DND sites by state and province

Military map questions