Marine Base Cited on 11 Waste Counts

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has cited the Camp Pendleton Marine base for 11 violations of hazardous waste laws, including failure to properly label and store hazardous wastes, lack of permits and lack of emergency training for Marines who work around the toxins.

EPA inspectors said they discovered the violations in July, just two months after Camp Pendleton officials had signed an agreement pledging to correct numerous problems that the EPA had discovered in 1989 and 1990. Since making that pledge, the Marine base had made some improvements, said Dave Schmidt, an EPA spokesman, but had failed to address several shortcomings.

“They’ve been careless and they haven’t cleaned up their act,” Schmidt said. “Not all these (violations) are big deals, but they all add up. It just shows that they’ve not been paying attention to the rules--that they haven’t read the rules, for that matter.”

The EPA did not levy a fine, Schmidt said, because the federal government has long held that military bases and other federal facilities are exempt from solid and hazardous waste laws. Had a civilian facility been cited for 11 violations, he said, the fine would have been “very substantial.”

Instead, the EPA issued a notice of noncompliance that requires the base to correct all violations, train hazardous waste workers and submit plans to prevent future violations--all within 30 to 60 days.

There is no penalty for noncompliance but EPA officials hope that public embarrassment will prompt such facilities to act quickly.

Lt. Kevin Bentley, a spokesman for Camp Pendleton, said Marine officials are investigating the complaints and will work with the EPA to fix them.

“We’ve been working really hard for quite some time to keep Camp Pendleton clean and to adhere to any environmental regulations. We really are making great efforts to adhere to the law,” he said. “If there is a violation, they’re going to work to correct it.”