Base Is Facing Unprecedented State EPA Fine

California’s environmental agency has cited the El Toro Marine Corps Air Station for illegal handling of hazardous waste and proposed an unprecedented $80,500 fine, state officials said Tuesday.

The California Environmental Protection Agency faulted the Marines for a variety of unsafe practices regarding toxic materials, including storage of so much waste at the base that it exceeded its allowable volume by 90%.

The El Toro base was cited for a series of similar violations by federal environmental officials 2 1/2 years ago. The Marine Corps officials promised at the time to correct the problems and ensure future compliance.

Until this year, California’s environmental agencies were allowed to inspect military bases and issue citations, but they could not impose fines. Under pressure from California officials, Congress eliminated the exemption, so now federal facilities are subject to the same fines that private companies have faced for years.

“In the past, we could always go ahead and cite them, but we couldn’t make them pay, so it was like a paper tiger,” said James Lee, a spokesman for the California Environmental Protection Agency.

Lee said the violations at the El Toro base surfaced during a state inspection in December.

Capt. Betsy Sweatt, a spokeswoman for the El Toro base, said the Marine Corps has requested a hearing with the state agency to negotiate a lower fine.

She stressed Tuesday that the citations involve handling and administrative issues. “None involve spills or releases or anything along those lines,” she said.

“Protecting the environment is a concern with us,” Sweatt added. “We want to work with them,” Sweatt said. “We’re doing an aggressive education program to try to train the Marines who do the handling. Obviously, we don’t want to break regulations . . . so we are putting a lot of assets toward handling this problem to make sure we are in compliance.”

The state agency also announced Tuesday that it has cited five other California military bases, for a total of $750,000 in fines. They are the El Centro Naval Air Station, the San Diego Naval Station Public Works Center, the National Training Center at Ft. Irwin, the Alameda Naval Air Station and Ft. Hunter Ligget in Monterey County.

James M. Strock, California’s Secretary for environmental protection, said in a statement Tuesday that the federal government now faces the “hard truth” that it “will be held accountable for compliance with California environmental law, just like private companies.”

“These fines and inspections will ensure that federal military bases comply with our environmental laws--bringing to book the largest generators of hazardous waste in some California communities,” Strock added.

Lee said none of the problems at the bases posed an imminent health threat, but at least two violations at El Toro are considered serious.

Violations include illegal volumes of waste stored, keeping hazardous waste for longer than the permissible 90 days, inadequate training of workers, inadequate tracking of waste shipments and failure to properly label and seal some waste drums.

“We see the violations and cite them, and nine times out of 10 they are situations that could become a threat but we get to them before they become a problem,” Lee said. “It’s not toxic waste lying in the streets in huge puddles. It’s things like not labeling containers so in case you do have an accident, you can’t identify what it is.”

The El Toro base is by far the largest producer of toxic waste in Orange County and is listed on the nation’s Superfund list of dangerous dump sites because of its large-scale contamination of soil and ground water.

Most of the contamination came from several decades of the Marine Corps dumping waste on the ground before federal laws banned such widely used disposal practices in the mid-1970s. The Marines still use large volumes of cleaning solvents, fuels and other toxic materials in El Toro and Tustin. The bases generate thousands of tons of toxic waste per year, more than some entire cities.

Local and state environmental officials say the Marines’ practices have improved in recent years, but that the volume of chemicals used there frequently lead to violations that could be avoided with more aggressive supervision and training.