sea after Hurricane Felix battered the Ruth's Bay shoreline, a Government official said yesterday.

And the storm exposed metals on the shoreline which Government thought the Navy had removed, Environment Ministry environmental engineer Dr. Thomas Sleeter said.

"This area was the Base's metals dump, which is next to the NAS landfill,'' Dr. Sleeter said during a tour of the damaged shore area.

"The Ministry was concerned with the shoreline and the possibility of a washout during a hurricane Govt. cries foul over Navy dump so we told the Base to pull the metals off of the shoreline,'' he said.

"There was 1,300 feet of metals on the shoreline and now it has been discovered that they only removed three quarters of it. We had no idea the remaining metals were still there until after Hurricane Felix removed part of the landfill.'' Cdr. Mike Donnelly, the Base public works officer, expressed surprise at Dr.

Sleeter's remarks. It was the Navy's idea to remove as much of the metal along the shoreline as it could, and it never pretended to have removed it all, he said.

Dr. Sleeter said the fact the sea washed away concrete blocks which the Navy had dumped along the shoreline heightened the risk of further erosion of the closed landfill site, where waste from the Base used to be burned in pits, Dr.

Sleeter said.

"The landfill was never closed properly, and they knew that,'' Management and Technology Minister the Hon. Grant Gibbons said yesterday of the US Navy.

Dr. Gibbons said the Navy ignored its own consultants' reports, which said the landfill needed a proper seawall to protect it from erosion, as well as a cap over top. The blocks that were placed along the shoreline were too small.

And Bermuda's consultant, RT Environmental Services Inc. of Pennsylvania, told the Navy the same thing, he said. "It was an unstable shoreline.

Essentially, we've had that proven with this storm.'' Cdr. Donnelly said the Navy did not expect the rocks it placed along the shore to protect against a hurricane of the "fury'' of Felix.

Dr. Gibbons noted Felix was "only a category one hurricane,'' with winds well below 100 miles per hour. "If we had had something along the lines of what Felix was (forecast to be), we would have had most of the landfill washed out to sea.'' Cdr. Donnelly said it was the high seas from Felix that were damaging, not the winds. "The shoreline protection that we put in did get washed out,'' he said.

But, "there were many things that didn't withstand the fury of this hurricane. When is the last time the causeway washed out?'' Dr. Gibbons commended the Navy for removing some metal from the shoreline, but said: "They took out two-thirds to three quarters and covered the rest of it up.'' Bermuda will be making further representations to get the Navy to rectify the situation, he said.

Only about 75 American military people and 70 civilians are still at the Base, which closes September 1.

Cdr. Donnelly said there was no erosion on top of the landfill. He could not comment on what could be done about the erosion, or who was responsible for trying to fix the shoreline. But he said the Navy now had too little manpower or equipment to do much of anything.

up in the ocean, Government officials say.