Navy Finds Pesticides at San Pedro Housing Site

The Navy has discovered low-level soil contamination at its fuel depot in San Pedro, where it recently built 300 apartments and where it plans to build another 300 units of housing for its enlisted personnel.

Two banned pesticides--DDT and chlordane--were found in soil borings taken at the site where the new 300-unit complex is to be built, according to an in-house memorandum released Thursday by the Navy. The borings also showed petroleum hydrocarbons in the soil.

Navy officials said the contamination poses no threat to residents of the existing 300-unit complex, which has been occupied since September.

Called Safe

“There is no danger whatsoever to any of the residents,” said Lt. Cmdr. Larry Serafini, a civil engineer at the Long Beach Naval Station, which is building the housing. “It’s completely in the soil and buried. Where it is now, it’s not going to hurt anyone.”

According to Serafini, the hazardous substances were confined to a small area and the quantity found does not exceed limits set by the state. However, he said, the Navy is unsure of the full extent of the contamination and is conducting additional testing.

“We didn’t find quantities like somebody dumped a truckload of DDT,” he said. “We don’t think there’s more than a pound of DDT on the whole site.”

A Navy spokesman said the contamination is five to 10 feet below the surface and will remain there unless the soil is disturbed by construction. The Navy will not permit construction until the testing is complete, said the spokesman, Lt. Cmdr. Steven Chesser.

Depending on the outcome of the tests, Chesser said, the Navy may decide to build some of the 300 units at the San Pedro site and build the remainder elsewhere in the Los Angeles-Long Beach area. The housing is for sailors stationed in Long Beach.

The Naval Fuel Depot, as the San Pedro site is called, is bounded by Western Avenue, Palos Verdes Drive North, Gaffey Street and--on its southern end--by two older Navy housing developments along John Montgomery Drive and Taper Avenue. The depot contains a network of underground and aboveground tanks where marine diesel fuel and jet fuel are stored.

Navy officials say the homes are sufficiently set back from the aboveground tanks and are not built over the ones underground.

However, Serafini said that during the most recent phase of construction, workers “ran into a small area of petroleum products that was contaminated.”

As a result, he said, “We relocated one small area of houses and regraded (the contaminated) area and planted grass on it.”

A recent U.S. Environmental Protection Agency report notes that “unknown quantities of sludge and other petroleum products” have been disposed of along the roads in the tank farm.

Cleanup a Low Priority

Meanwhile, state health officials, suspecting that the fuel depot site is contaminated, have placed it on their list of hazardous waste sites slated for cleanup. However, they say they are not certain how much hazardous waste is on the site or specifically where it may be located. They also said cleanup is a low priority because contamination is worse at other sites.

“We’re not currently working on it,” said John Scandura, a hazardous-materials supervisor for the Department of Health’s toxics division. “It is in our backlog.”