Wilson Attacks Waste Problem : Criticizes Military ‘Foot-Dragging’ on El Toro Pollution

Sen. Pete Wilson on Friday faulted military officials for refusing to investigate and take the blame for hazardous waste that is creeping westward through ground water around the El Toro Marine Corps Air Station.

Nonetheless, during an afternoon fact-finding visit to the base with several dozen military and government officials he had assembled there, Wilson praised their cooperation in reacting to the polluted ground water, which lies below about 1,300 acres directly west of the base.

“The cooperation seems to be excellent,” Wilson said after the generally cordial meeting. Moments later, though, he took the military to task for “foot-dragging” and refusing to investigate off-base contamination. “When you have a situation where the liability is pretty clear, there is no reason for this delay,” he said.

Trichloroethylene, a cancer-causing chemical also called TCE, has been found in three irrigation wells and two monitoring wells owned by the Irvine Co. on and near the Marine base. For three decades after World War II, TCE was used at the air base to clean grease from aircraft engines.

The TCE-contaminated ground water--as well as three on-base landfills containing solid wastes--prompted the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency last month to add the El Toro facility to its Superfund hazardous-waste cleanup list.

While the military has launched an investigation into TCE contamination beneath the base, military officials have yet to investigate or accept responsibility for contaminated ground water outside their territory, thus defying a cleanup and abatement order from the government.

“The contamination is there,” admitted Navy Capt. Stan Holm, one of several military officers who met with Wilson. “But until definite responsibility is determined, we are precluded” from investigating or mopping up contamination outside the base.

Responding to Wilson’s charge of “foot-dragging,” Holm said that after TCE was first discovered near the base in 1985, military chiefs met with officials of the Orange County Water District to coordinate their separate investigations.

The water district is conducting a $600,000 study into pollution off the base that is scheduled to be concluded in December, about the same time the military’s on-base investigation will end. Both studies will reveal the precise magnitude of ground-water contamination in the area, as well as who or what to pin the blame on.

Water district engineers first discovered TCE in two irrigating wells next to the El Toro base three years ago.

Officials are anxious to halt the TCE spread through ground water in the area because it is approaching several wells about 4 miles west of the base that are used for domestic drinking water.

It is not certain as to the exact speed with which the TCE is spreading. But as the delay in halting the chemical’s spread is prolonged, officials said Friday, cleanup costs rise geometrically.

“I am concerned that the cleanup move forward,” William Mills, water distric general manager, told Wilson. He outlined a plan by which the contaminated ground water would be pumped and piped several dozen miles northeast of the base to Siphon Reservoir. But ridding the area of TCE, he warned, will take between 10 and 15 years.

Wilson authored legislation in 1985 to improve military toxic-waste cleanup procedures. At the time, he conducted similar meetings at four military bases in other parts of California.