Los Alamitos Base Cleaning Up Image and Its Toxic Waste

More than 50 years after the military began operations at Los Alamitos Armed Forces Reserve Center, base officials are boring into the earth and poring over old records to find out what toxic materials were left behind.

The base is now finishing the second of six phases in the “installation restoration” program, a military cleanup process that parallels Superfund cleanup of civilian sites. Early tests have shown there is some ground-water and possible soil contamination, but base officials and environmental regulators say it poses little public health risk.

“There does not appear to be any real threat according to the preliminary results,” said Joe Irvin, a spokesman for the state Department of Toxic Substances Control. “The ground water collected there is not being used for wells or public consumption.”

To ease public concerns, the base is also forming a citizens advisory board that will serve as a liaison between the cleanup staff and the community. Flyers requesting volunteers for the board were delivered to 2,100 neighboring homes, 800 of which abut the base, said Col. Jim Ghormley, a spokesman for the military facility.

The base is seeking up to 25 members, and the application deadline was Monday. As of Friday, 22 residents had applied to serve on the board.

“It’s probably the most serious environmental issue to face the Los Alamitos community in the past and in the foreseeable future,” said Kathy Matsuyama, a base neighbor who has been active in organizing the citizens board. “I see citizen participation as really in a watchdog capacity, keeping the U.S. government honest in this effort . . . I think it’s our obligation to our children, our community and ourselves to make sure the government does the cleanup efficiently and thoroughly and effectively, and doesn’t just cover it up.”

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Base officials began the first phase of the restoration in 1992, piecing together a map of where hazardous materials might have been deposited in the past. Because of changes in operations since the base opened in 1942, some areas where toxic chemicals were used are now covered by buildings or concrete. To identify those spots, staff pored over old files, newspaper archives and aerial photos of the base, and interviewed former base employees.

The investigation revealed several sites of possible contamination, including a landfill, a sewage sludge lagoon, a former firing range, underground fuel storage tanks and equipment contaminated by polychlorinated biphenyl, known as PCB, a cancer-causing chemical formerly used as an insulator for electrical equipment.

A second phase involved site inspections of areas of possible contamination. Restoration staff installed water-monitoring wells, collected samples of soil and underground gas, and used ground-penetrating radar to seek buried drums, pipes or cavities in the soil that could indicate deposits of toxic chemicals.

Tests of the sewage lagoon and landfill showed no contamination, Ghormley said. Base officials have removed most of the contaminated electrical equipment and underground fuel tanks, and plan to remove the remaining tanks within 90 days. The firing range is also due to be treated for remnants of lead left over from shooting practice.

The water-monitoring wells, however, yielded signs of contamination that pose the most extensive environmental problem on the base, he said. Several water samples showed high levels of gasoline and diesel, as well as cancer-causing chemicals, such as benzene (a component of gasoline) and various other solvents.

Levels of several solvents were 2 to 150 times higher than state limits for drinking water. At least one sample last year showed levels of benzene more than 3,000 times higher than the acceptable level.

Ghormley said, though, that layers of dense clay prevent those chemicals from seeping into deeper levels of the aquifer that supplies drinking water to the city. And the base will clean up the contaminated pockets within a year, he said.

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“I would say there would not be any serious threat to human health or the environment because the water is not moving that fast,” said Mike Adackapara, chief of special projects for the Santa Ana Regional Water Quality Control Board. “We would not like to see it left too long because it is slowly migrating, but right now it is not in any drinking water sources, so there isn’t any immediate threat to human health.”

But Erik Olson, a senior attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council, cautioned that without costly geological studies, it is hard to say for certain that ground under a toxic site has no faults, folds or abandoned wells that could conduct contaminated ground water to deeper levels of the aquifer.

Further, he added, chemicals such as those found on the base can be hard to extract from the water table.

“So you can do your best and try to minimize the spread of contaminants, but it’s extremely difficult in many cases to fully clean up a site like that unless you dig up all the soil,” Olson said.

Base environmentalist Troy Hardin said that seismic studies on the site have shown no active faults. He said the soil and water contamination can be reduced to safe levels using bacteria that consume and neutralize the toxins, along with other cleanup methods. The base will begin the cleanup process within eight months to a year, he said.

“There are preliminary reports that indicate there is work to be done out there,” said Irvin. “We also feel comfortable and confident that the base wants to do the work.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Toxic Base A mixture of toxic materials has shown up in ground water and soil at the Los Alamitos Armed Forces Reserve Center. At least one of the chemicals has been found in 11 wells at three sites on the base, and levels have exceeded state drinking-water standards. Locations and chemicals found: *

Tetachloroethene * State limit: 5 parts per billion (micrograms/cubic liter) * Highest level on base: 41 * Health risks: Probable human carcinogen; liver, kidney damage *

Trichloroethene * State limit: 5 ppb * Highest level on base: 130 * Health risks: Probable human carcinogen *

1,1 Dichloroethene * State limit: 6 ppb * Highest level on base: 11 * Health risks: Possible human carcinogen *

1,2 Dichloroethane * State limit: 0.5 ppb * Highest level on base: 72 * Health risks: Cardiac stimulation, possible carcinogen *

Benzene * State limit: 1 ppb * Highest level on base: 1,600 * Health risks: Known human carcinogen *

Ethylbenzene * State limit: 680 ppb * Highest level on base: 1,000 * Health risks: Heart damage *

Toluene * State limit: 100 ppb * Highest level on base: 530 * Health risks: Depression of central nervous system Sources: Los Alamitos Reserve Center; state Department of Toxic Substances Control; Regional Water Quality Control Board; Researched by DEBORAH SULLIVAN / For The Times