Marine Corps Doing About-Face on Waste From El Toro, Tustin

The evidence was troubling: A vast pool of underground water, stretching more than 3 miles from the edge of the El Toro Marine Corps Air Station to the heart of residential Irvine, had been contaminated with a cancer-causing chemical.

As the local water district official delivered his report at a recent public meeting, he built a case against the military as the source of the contamination. Seated in the front row, Navy Capt. S. R. Holm Jr., attired in freshly pressed dress blues, listened intently until it was his turn to speak. When he stood, surprisingly, he had no counterattack, only a conciliatory offering.

“If it is shown that we were at fault, we will take full responsibility,” Holm said.

Holm’s remarks, some say, reflect the U.S. Marine Corps’ gradual change of attitude toward environmental issues. The Tustin Marine Corps Helicopter Air Station and El Toro Marine Corps Air Station have long been among Orange County’s largest producers of hazardous wastes, according to county records. For nearly four decades, solvents, jet fuel, paint products and hydraulic fluids were dumped routinely--an illegal practice by today’s standards--at El Toro, a 4,900-acre jet fighter and bomber training base, and at the nearby Tustin base, a 1,000-acre helicopter training facility.

It was even common practice at many installations, including El Toro, to spray dirt lots and vacant fields with petroleum wastes and chemicals to control dust on windy days.

But the Marines are changing their ways. Facing public pressure, tougher laws and a health risk to their own troops, they have given environmental issues a higher priority, said Holm, director of facilities management at the El Toro base. The corps is willing to right the environmental wrongs of the past and cooperate with local, state and federal regulatory agencies, which have complained for years about the military’s failure to clean up its hazardous waste, he said.

At the El Toro air station, the Marines in recent years have identified 14 sites, including several landfills and firefighter training pits, where hazardous wastes such as jet fuel and paint thinners may have been dumped in the past. Similarly, 11 such sites have been identified at the Tustin base. None of these sites has yet been excavated or tested, so it is not known whether they contain any high levels of toxic wastes or radioactive material. To make that determination, the corps says that within the next year, it will use more than $500,000 from the military’s $400-million Defense Environmental Restoration Account--the U.S. Defense Department’s special environmental cleanup fund--to investigate the suspected hazardous waste sites at each base.

“We haven’t always been the best neighbor when it comes to taking care of the environment,” Holm said. “But we like to think we’ve gotten a bit more enlightened in recent years.”

‘Greater Inclination to Listen’

Irvine Mayor Larry Agran, one of the military’s harshest local critics, agrees that the Marines have begun to show a “greater inclination to listen” to concerns and complaints from surrounding cities and outside agencies. But he predicted that the Marines’ “new attitude” will be tested as water and health experts begin acting to clean up what is potentially the largest ground-water contamination case in Orange County history.

Varying levels of trichloroethylene, or TCE, have been detected in the ground water beneath the El Toro air base and portions of Irvine. The presence of cancer-causing TCE, a strong degreasing agent used by the military until the late 1970s to clean jet fighter and helicopter engines, poses no immediate threat to public wells.

But Orange County Water District officials warn that if the polluted ground water, which has contaminated several miles of the aquifer, is not removed, it eventually could seep into Irvine’s domestic drinking supplies. The aquifer is a pocket of porous rock near the earth’s surface where water collects.

“There has been an attempt by the Marines to be more forthcoming about environmental issues,” Agran said. “But we are dealing with something here that is much bigger than disclosure or public relations. We have a serious problem, and I think this is a big test of the Marines’ willingness to cooperate.”

Armed to Meet Challenge

To that end, the Marines say they are better armed now to meet the challenge.

For years, one person monitored the handling and disposal of tons of hazardous materials and wastes at both air stations. Since 1984, the Marines have added five experts to their environmental staff, headed by Navy Ensign Michael Rehor, a chemical engineer. In addition, a hazardous waste recycling program has been launched on the bases to sell unused or contaminated jet fuel, solvents, paints and petroleum-based products to civilian contractors.

As part of a $7.5-million military contract awarded recently to a Santa Ana firm, a long-awaited inspection of 460 underground fuel storage tanks at the El Toro base is scheduled to begin this summer, a process that may take up to 4 years to complete. Only 80 of the tanks are in use; the rest have been abandoned and, for the most part, are empty. State and local health officials have long pushed for a tank inspection program at El Toro out of concern that the tanks, many of which are as old as the 56-year-old base, may be leaking toxic residues.

Only One Tank Inspected

Under California law, all underground chemical and fuel tanks should have been inspected by their owners by 1986. So far only one tank at El Toro has been examined. That 110,000-gallon storage tank was found to be in good condition, but a feeder line carrying high-performance jet fuel had a tiny leak, which has been patched, county officials said.

“A year ago, we were not very happy with the Marines,” said Robert Merryman, Orange County’s director of environmental health. “But today, as far as compliance with the underground tank-testing program goes, we’re very pleased.”

The Marines have taken several preventive steps, as well. Classes on the handling and proper disposal of hazardous materials and wastes are conducted regularly for those who live and work at the two bases. Storage drums containing paint thinners, hydraulic fluids, oily rags and lubricants must be clearly marked, numbered and stored at one of 60 hazardous waste accumulation sites at the two bases. Each barrel is listed on a master log and its movement on base is tracked.

“A large part of our job is education,” Holm said. “We’ve got 10,000 Marines here, many of them young kids from the hills of West Virginia or Oklahoma. At home, they think nothing of going out back and dumping a couple of cans of motor oil into the stream. For them, it’s an acceptable practice.”

More Sensitive Marines

But that doesn’t work in Orange County, he said. “Fortunately, today’s Marine is much more sensitive to the environment than 10 years ago. . . . But that’s not to say we don’t have a long way to go.”

One disagreement with county and state officials is the corps’ refusal to pay its share of county and regional costs for environmental programs.

The Marines owe the county more than $108,000 in fees and penalties as producers of hazardous wastes and owners of underground storage tanks, Merryman said. The Marines also owe the South Coast Air Quality Management District about $18,000 in fees, which are levied annually based on the amount of air pollution a business or industry produces.

U.S. military officials say the fee is a tax, and that federal agencies are exempt from local and state taxes. The U.S. Justice Department has filed a lawsuit against the air quality district on behalf of all military bases in the region contesting the fees. The Marines have also refused to pay the county penalties.

Superfund Status Recommended

The ground-water issue remains he most serious problem, however.

Though the Marines have refused to acknowledge full responsibility, county, state and federal officials say the El Toro base is the primary source of the TCE found in the contaminated ground water. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency last year recommended placing the entire El Toro base on the national Superfund list for toxic waste sites. If it receives Superfund status, EPA officials will then oversee inspection, cleanup and monitoring of any hazardous waste sites on base, including the TCE-contaminated ground water.

Contamination was first suspected in 1985, when local water agencies found traces of TCE in agricultural wells near the western edge of the El Toro base. When the Santa Ana Regional Water Quality Board, a state agency, ordered the Marines to initiate testing to determine how far the TCE contamination had spread off the base, the Marines refused. Marine Corps officials said it was Defense Department policy not to spend federal money to study chemicals that have seeped into private property unless there was proof they came from the military base.

Investigation Launched

Concerned that further delays would only worsen the situation, the Orange County Water District launched its own $1.2-million investigation, drilling a series of test wells near the base. Their findings, released earlier this year, showed the existence of one large plume of TCE-contaminated ground water nearly 3 miles long and half a mile wide that stretches from the El Toro base to a point halfway between Jeffrey Road and Culver Drive, in the Woodbridge area of Irvine. The studies also suggested the plume was moving in a westward direction at a rate of 1 to 4 feet a day.

The Marines conducted their own study and found TCE-contaminated ground water at three locations on the base. But they argue that more tests are needed to link the ground water contamination at the air station with that found under Irvine. The corps, however, has agreed for the first time to pay for the off-base tests needed to explore that connection. The Marines are expected to present a timetable for that work at the May 31 meeting of the Orange County Water District.

Although the water district paid for the initial TCE tests and is going ahead with the cleanup of contaminated ground water outside the base, agency officials say they eventually will bill the Marines for those costs. Experts estimate it could take up to 15 years to pump the TCE-contaminated water from the ground at a cost of several million dollars.

Slow Response Cited

The TCE controversy illustrates one of the most persistent complaints about the corps: its slow response to resolving environmental problems.

“We are not pointing the finger at them for what they did 20 or 30 years ago,” said Curt Berchthold, senior engineer with the Santa Ana Regional Water Quality Board, which oversees most of the watershed in Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties.

“We know people dumped TCE and other chemicals on the ground. The problem we have is the rate at which they are moving to correct those problems. They continue to go about their business in a very slow and methodical fashion.”

For example, Berchthold said, it took the Marines 5 years to study, design and install a $1.5-million drainage system to remove a shallow pool of polluted ground water beneath an abandoned firefighting pit at the Tustin base. The pits were used to train Marine firefighters to extinguish fires involving jet fuel in the event a jet fighter or helicopter crashed. The drainage system was completed last summer.

Part of the problem, Holm said, is the bureaucratic nature of the military.

“Frankly, I wish we could move faster. When people say we’re slow, I think it’s a fair criticism,” Holm said. “Trouble is, this is a big place, and people forget that we’re like a small city. It takes time to react.”