New Wrinkle in Land Fight at Former Tustin Base

Two toxic plumes have been discovered beneath a potential Santa Ana school site at the closed Tustin Marine base, school officials battling for the land said Friday.

A study, done for the two Santa Ana school districts that are fighting the city of Tustin for the land, reported contamination 20 to 25 feet underground. It includes the gasoline additive MTBE, a suspected carcinogen, and the toxic chemicals trichloropropane, benzene and trichloroethene, used at the former base as an engine degreaser, according to consultant Denise Clendening. She works for the Fullerton environmental firm Arcadis Geraghty & Miller, which did the study for the Santa Ana Unified and Rancho Santiago Community College districts.

Those preliminary findings show that the site will probably never meet strict state standards for schools, Clendening said.

“There was also toluene and ethyl benzene, plus other toxic chemicals, at the site that are above the state’s standards for school sites,” Clendening said. The statistical risk is that five people out of 100,000 could get cancer, she said.

Tustin Mayor Tracy Wills Worley called the new findings a “red herring,” saying the Navy publicly disclosed the contamination at the former base years ago. The military has promised to clean up the base.

“For them to be surprised about this contamination is baffling,” Worley said. “Where have they been? The Navy has said it is committed to cleaning the base up.”

Additionally, the argument by the school officials that the property is useless “is not based on fact” because the Navy also has to go through a stringent regulatory process to clean the site, Tustin City Manager William A. Huston said.

The two Santa Ana school districts want a 100-acre piece of the base for a unique kindergarten-through-college campus.

The request initially was granted in 1994 by Tustin and the U.S. Education Department. But Tustin later changed its base reuse plan and offered the land to the South Orange County Community College District.

Tustin’s recent compromise offer was 22 acres on the base to the Santa Ana Unified School District, 15 acres to the Rancho Santiago Community College District and $20 million to the districts.

The two school districts want the 100 acres and say they’ll file a civil rights lawsuit by Monday against Tustin for allegedly offering them land that is the “most dirty, the most contaminated” on the base.

“We didn’t know the degree of contamination there at the site until we hired an expert,” Santa Ana Unified Supt. Al Mijares said.

Worley said the city is ready to defend itself in court, if necessary.

“We believe they have had every opportunity to try to settle this deal with us. We’ve increased our offer from $3 million to [a package valued at] $72 million, and it’s still not enough for them, so we don’t think they want to settle. Our council has no choice but to fend off the lawsuit.”