El Toro About-Face : Marines Start to Get in Step With Environmental Concerns

The evidence was troubling: A vast pool of underground water, stretching more than three 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, he had no counterattack, only a conciliatory offering.

‘Full Responsibility’

“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.

$500,000 Effort

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.”

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.”

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 four 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.

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.”

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.”

The ground-water issue remains the most serious problem.

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.

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.”

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.”