‘What Ifs’ Loom Over El Toro Park Plans

As plans for a Great Park at the closed El Toro Marine base take root, anxious whispers of “what if” are blooming:

What if terrible things lurk beneath the weeds and asphalt on the thousands of acres that the Navy says don’t need to be tested for toxic contamination?

When it comes to rehabbing military installations that were used as far back as World War II, such “what ifs” have been known to lead to huge problems.

Just ask around at McClellan Air Force Base in Sacramento.

Federal environmental investigators were moving along with cleanup there in September 2000 when they came across a mysterious 20-gallon drum. When they opened it, they discovered half a dozen glass vials containing weapons-grade plutonium. There were no records that plutonium was ever manufactured or disposed of anywhere on the site. The finding could set cleanup back decades and is expected to increase cleanup costs on that area of McClellan from $10 million to $54 million.

Such surprises are the norm in base redevelopment. Those involved with the process say it is wishful thinking to assume things will be different at El Toro, which is already on the federal Superfund list as one of the nation’s most polluted sites.

“These sites are full of uncertainty,” said Jody Freeman, a professor of environmental law at UCLA. “They have been contaminated over the decades, and it is very rare that we know precisely what was dumped in them.”

Unexpected contamination is the reason the process has been excruciatingly slow at so many base sites.

And it is why some reuse experts warn that much of the Great Park plan that voters approved in March, ending a decade-long political battle to build a commercial airport at the base, could be delayed for years.

The cleanup at El Toro is following the Superfund routine. Investigators look for documents that tell them where waste is buried and direct their cleanup to those areas. The documents suggest that toxic chemicals and low-level radioactive waste contaminate about 13% of the 4,700-acre property, and the federal government is paying to clean that up.

But the documented contamination isn’t what worries critics of the Navy’s cleanup plan. It’s the undocumented material that might be beneath the remaining 87% of the base where investigators aren’t even looking.

Among the places federal officials have yet to thoroughly investigate is the ground under the expansive runway system, although the Navy says it is satisfied with samplings it has done alongside the runways. Experts who have observed base closures warn that the area is a likely depository for thousands of gallons of fuel that leaked as jets gassed up, as well as dangerous chemicals used in degreasing.

This month, the Orange County Board of Supervisors unanimously approved a ballot measure for November that asks voters to demand that the Navy conduct the most thorough cleanup possible, one that would presumably involve extensive soil sampling throughout the property. In pushing her measure, Board Chairwoman Cynthia P. Coad told about her experience with buying a supposedly cleaned-up chunk of San Diego’s Camp Elliott in the mid-1960s.

Houses were built on the former Marine boot camp and nuclear propulsion laboratory and everything seemed fine--until two 8-year-old boys were killed in 1983 when an anti-tank shell that the military had left on the property exploded while they were playing with it.

“Experiences at other closed bases should be a wake-up call,” Coad said.

Great Park boosters say the warnings are the work of politicians who are angry that their plan for a commercial airport was defeated.

“It is a continuing case of the doubters and defeatists and professional pessimists we have to deal with day after day,” Irvine Mayor Larry Agran said.

Under a deal worked out with the Navy, Irvine is spearheading the base redevelopment and hopes to annex the property next year. It will allow developers to build 3,400 homes and 2.9 million square feet of retail space to fund the park project.

“The operating reality is that as far as we know, 87% of the land is free of toxic contamination,” he said. “If more land is discovered to be contaminated, then it will be the federal government’s obligation to clean it up.”

Agran acknowledges that it could be years before the site is fully clean but says that will not slow progress of the park plan. He said construction can start on various pieces of the base as soon as they are cleared by the Navy and federal environmental officials.

And if a lot more contamination is discovered than expected?

“The federal government has not indicated in any way, shape or form that they intend to shirk their responsibilities,” Agran said. “If the cleanup takes three, five, even 20 years, they will provide the funds that are needed.”

For its part, the Navy anticipates that the cleanup will almost be completed by 2008. Spokeswoman Lt. Cmdr. Pauline Storum said the Navy is confident that no unexpected contamination will be found. “The Navy has no current reason to anticipate an unforeseen circumstance that would slow down the current cleanup efforts at El Toro,” she said.

Storum added, however, that if additional contamination is found after the property is transferred, the Navy is required by federal law to return to clean it up.

Those who have lived through a base cleanup, however, caution that it’s unwise to take the Navy at its word. They applaud the county for putting the cleanup measure on the ballot as a way to keep the pressure on. Cleanup standards vary widely, they say, and local communities need to push the military to poke holes into the ground early.

“The military is reluctant to dig in too many places because they are likely to find stuff,” said Chris Shirley, a staff scientist at Arc Ecology in San Francisco, a nonprofit group that monitors base conversions. “Most of the places we have worked on, when the military dug a hole they generally found more than they expected.”