Irvine to Probe El Toro’s Hazards

After spending more than $150 million on environmental cleanup, the Navy is confident that most of the former El Toro Marine Corps Air Station is unpolluted, but Irvine officials have expressed concern over drainage ditches and an old sewer system used at the base.

“The city believes that a substantial amount of solvents used on the base could have been put down the sewer system, which was built in the 1940s using old technology,” said Michael S. Brown, Irvine’s environmental consultant. “We believe there are many leaks.”

The ditches and sewer system were among the environmental bconcerns expressed last week after county supervisors approved a five-year lease with the Navy for El Toro.

The county will lease a small portion of the 4,700-acre former base that has passed environmental inspection. The lease allows recreational activities such as RV parking, golf and use of El Toro’s horse stables, among others, to continue while the county arranges leases for another 43 buildings it plans to sublease as warehouse space to generate revenue.

“The key in the lease is that now the county can conduct its own separate study of [Navy] documents so that we can identify if any gaps exist and what the Navy proposes to do,” said Rob Richardson, interim executive director of the county’s El Toro planning office. “The master lease also allows us to find out what’s in the ground.”

Most of the cleanup has occurred over a 17-year period, but surrounding cities like Irvine remain critical of the Navy’s remaining cleanup plans.

The contaminated property includes 12 acres containing landfills, a wide plume of tainted ground water and underground tanks where the military once stored jet fuel and oils. Dealing with contaminated ground water could be the toughest environmental project on the former base.

Brown said El Toro’s southwest corner is especially troublesome because it includes drainage ditches that solvents were washed down after being used to degrease engines and engine parts until 1975.

“Lots of solvents were used for cleaning airplanes after they flew and for cleaning parts and degreasing tanks and vehicles,” Brown said. “They’ve found [cancer-causing] trichloroethene in the plume, and research shows this was used throughout the base and not just in the southwest corner.”

According to the Navy, considerable environmental progress has been made, especially in the last two years. Of the 880 so-called “locations of concern” more than 600 require no further action, the Navy says.

Of 400 underground storage tanks, 371 have been removed and more are scheduled to be removed.

Projects the Navy has scheduled for completion this year include an agreement with the Orange County and Irvine Ranch Water Districts to address ground-water contamination. Work on capping four landfills will continue.

In addition, all of the base’s old electrical transformers have been removed and require no further action. Polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs--a chemical widely used as a coolant in older electrical transformers--has been linked to cancer and birth defects.

In addition, the Navy is now conducting a radiological assessment because some aircraft carried radioactive equipment.

The Navy still must clean up the base’s former burn pits, landfills, silver recovery units and storage areas for pesticides. Under base closure law, the Navy is responsible for cleanup, county officials have said.

“The Navy believes that they’ve identified all the major contaminated sites on the base,” Brown said. “But we don’t believe that and neither does the Orange County district attorney.”

*

The district attorney has threatened a lawsuit over five underground fuel tanks that must be closed, upgraded or removed. He says the Navy never received the proper permits to operate the tanks, never upgraded them as required by law and now has failed to submit adequate closure plans.

Larry Agran, an Irvine council member and outspoken critic of the county’s plans for an international airport at El Toro, said he senses that the county “in its zeal” to grab El Toro property will basically “sell out the health and safety interests” of county residents rather than fight to ensure that the base is cleaned up.

Agran supports the Millennium Plan, an airport alternative that would convert the base into a large park, a college campus and museums.

“From the very beginning, airport proponents have peddled a ludicrous argument that the airport is more suitable for the base because we won’t have to clean it up as much as for residential use,” Agran said.

But Board of Supervisors Chairman Chuck Smith, an airport supporter, said Agran’s position was ridiculous.

“We’re going to force the Navy to clean it up to the standards set by the [U.S.] Environmental Protection Agency. For him to expect to clean it up to something greater than that is ridiculous.”

Smith said that attempting to transform the land to the way it was before the base was built is unrealistic.

“For [Agran] to expect to clean it up to the way it was before the base was there is impossible because we have landfills out there used for years and it’s well known the Navy isn’t going to clean it up for residential use,” he said.