El Toro Air Base May Join Superfund List : EPA Proposes Addition to Cleanup Roster for 1950s-’60s Wastes

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency officials Tuesday proposed adding the El Toro Marine Corps Air Station to the nation’s Superfund hazardous-waste cleanup list, joining 242 sites with priority, 31 of which are in California or Arizona.

The EPA has targeted 21 “problem” areas on the base, from buried drums of explosives and low-level radioactive waste to PCBs and water contaminated with trichloroethylene, or TCE, which is a cancer-causing agent, said Terry Wilson, an EPA spokesman in San Francisco.

Three public wells, used for irrigating crops in the Irvine area, have already been contaminated with TCE, widely used by the air base as an agent to clean grease out of aircraft engines, said Jim Reilly, water quality director for the Orange County Water District.

Most Serious Contamination

“With respect to the water supply, this is possibly the most serious (contamination) problem we have in the Orange County basin,” Reilly said.

TCE has been found in irrigation wells on and off the base, Wilson said, adding that about 1,100 acres of land are irrigated by wells within 3 miles of the site.

The El Toro base would be the county’s second Superfund site, joining the abandoned McColl dump site in Fullerton. Wilson said a decision to add an abandoned Westminster dump, where a tar-like sludge has seeped into neighborhood yards, is pending.

The decision to add the air base to the Superfund National Priorities List was made after on-site investigations resulted in a ranking score of hazardous wastes that was greater than 28.5 on a scale of 1 to 100, Wilson said.

According to the EPA, the base has three landfills of solid wastes. Most contaminants date back to the 1950s and ‘60s and include buried drums of explosives, low-level radioactive waste, areas with PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls, a suspected carcinogen), battery acids, leaded fuels and other hazardous substances that were dumped or spilled, Wilson said.

Ensign Michael Rehor, environmental director for El Toro base and the nearby Tustin Marine Helicopter Air Station, said such dumping was an acceptable practice in the 1950s and 1960s.

The El Toro base has been ordered by state water quality officials to sample water wells both on and off the base.

“So far, they have only tested wells on the base,” Reilly said. adding that the water district has started its own $600,000 investigation.

Listing as a Superfund site would mean only that the EPA can monitor efforts by the base and the Department of Defense to investigate and clean up the air station.