Toxic Agents Found in Water Under Base

Toxic and cancer-causing chemicals have seeped into water beneath the National Guard base in Los Alamitos, but it appears there is no danger to drinking water either at the base or in nearby communities, Orange County officials said Wednesday.

The chemicals are apparently coming from the base’s solid-waste dump and from a former firefighter training pit, officials said. The pit is no longer used and the dump is being phased out, National Guard officials said.

“This is very, very early data,” said Dixie Lass, senior engineering geologist for the Santa Ana Regional Water Quality Control Board, a state agency that oversees water quality in populous areas of Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties.

“They (the National Guard) need to do some additional monitoring, and they’ll be doing that. We’re in touch with them and they’re cooperative,” Lass said.

Robert E. Merryman, director of environmental health for Orange County, announced Wednesday that contamination had been discovered under the base. He said a state constitutional amendment passed in 1986 requires news media to be notified when such discoveries are made.

Some of the chemicals are up to nine times the allowable concentration for drinking water, but there is “no immediate danger to public health,” Merryman said.

Lass said the closest drinking-water well, about a mile from the base, has been tested regularly, “and that well is fine.” She said drinking water is not likely to be fouled because there is a level of dense clay between the contaminated water and the drinking water farther underground.

The contamination was discovered through a state program mandated by the Legislature, under which all landfill sites in California will eventually be tested. But the dump at the Los Alamitos Armed Forces Training Center was rated a “Rank 1” landfill site because of suspicions of significant leakage and was tested in the program’s first year of enforcement, 1986.

A private consultant hired by the National Guard reported in May that the contamination “appears pretty stable and is not going anywhere,” said Maj. Steve Mensik, a National Guard spokesman. He said the consultant recommended that test wells be drilled to be certain that the contamination has not spread.

“We are essentially waiting to see what Orange County wants us to do,” Mensik said.

Lass said the National Guard will probably be ordered to monitor the contamination, and if the situation warrants, to pump the contaminated water to the surface where it can be treated.

The Los Alamitos dump is one of five Rank 1 sites in Orange County.

A report on the county-owned Santiago Canyon dump has been submitted recently to the board and says that that dump is leaking, Lass said. “We’re not talking about ghastly amounts of chemicals, and there’s nobody nearby. But it appears to be migrating down a canyon,” she said. “We’ll be asking them (county officials) to extend their investigation down that canyon to see how far it’s gotten and what we should do about it.”