2001 Winner

Richard Albright is an attorney, toxicologist, and environmental specialist with the DC Department of Health. After working as a lawyer at federal agencies, he came to the District government, first as an attorney and then as a scientist with the health department, which allowed him to indulge his fascination with ordnance (weapons).

For the past six years, Albright has been a man on a mission who almost single-handedly forced the federal government to clean up chemical contamination left over from World War I, in the Spring Valley neighborhood, an upscale community in upper northwest Washington, DC, located near American University. In 1993, Spring Valley residents learned that their neighborhood was built on top of a chemical weapons proving ground. Through Albright's efforts, he has helped to uncover a major health hazard and threat to residents. There is now hard evidence of cancer clusters in Spring Valley. Albright's fastidious oversight and diligence is responsible for identifying buried chemical warfare sites and other military hazards in the District of Columbia, which ranks 10th among states for its amounts of buried munitions.

In 1995, the US Army Corps of Engineers said the problems were cleaned up and "no further action" was necessary. In the face of ridicule and stonewalling from the Army, Albright refused to relent. He spent months in archives researching the history of the chemical weapons production facility at American University in 1918 and examined aerial photographs. After conducting extensive research, site investigations, and citizen interviews, Albright wrote a 170-page report that forced the Army and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to re-open their investigations in the Spring Valley area. Subsequently, the Army found arsenic levels twenty times as high as the EPA removal guidelines and hundreds of previously undiscovered ordnance. He has succeeded in getting the US Army Corps of Engineers to agree to sample all properties in the Spring Valley area and to create a Restoration Advisory Board for the project, requests he made nearly five years ago. To date, Albright's efforts have lead to the removal of 280 ordnance items, and 175 bottles of chemical warfare material from Spring Valley, 35 ordnance items from Camp Simms, and the discovery of a leaking nuclear reactor at Walter Reed Hospital.

Albright has turned his attention to other parts of the city, including Catholic University and the University of the District of Columbia, areas which presently contain high levels of toxic substances, or possible buried military ordnance.

Albright went to University of Michigan, and got a law degree from Wayne State University. He received a master's degree in environmental health and science at George Washington University. Albright has two children and resides in Washington, DC with his wife.