MCAS EL TORO SUPERFUND SITE
Marine Corps Air Station El Toro, California, closed in July 1999, is an EPA Superfund site. There’s no legal requirement for the government to notify Marines of the Contaminants of Concern (COCs) they may have been exposed to and their health effects. COCs are chemical substances that pose an unacceptable risk to human health or the environment. This website links to EPA’s COCs and to their health effects. Marines are encouraged to share this information with their health care providers. ©
SYNOPSIS
BETRAYAL tells the story of the thousands of veterans and their families, once stationed at El Toro and Camp Lejeune, who continued to be ignored by the U.S. government by denial of the effects of exposure to environmental hazards, including the highest incidence of occurrence of male breast cancer in any other demographic in the U.S. at Camp Lejeune. Legislation to provide health care for Camp Lejeune veterans and their dependents was passed in the 112th Congress. No veteran compensation was included in the Janey Ensminger Act. None of the veterans that served aboard these two installations were notified of their exposure to deadly contaminants when it was discovered resulting in both bases earning Superfund Cleanup Site status. Many veterans have died without ‘connecting the dots’ between their killing diseases and military service.
BETRAYAL includes the story of the death and murder of Marine Colonel James E. Sabow and other Marines whose deaths have are tied to use of El Toro assets during the 1980s and 1990s to import South American cocaine into the U.S and to export guns to the Contra Rebel faction of Nicaragua. Demanding courts martial to clear his name of false charges and threatening to blow the whistle on the use of El Toro’s assets to support narcotrafficing, Colonel Sabow was found dead in his quarters by his wife on January 22, 1991. The circumstances surrounding his death and the forensic evidence from the crime scene support murder by a government assassination team, crime scene tampering and government cover-up at the highest levels, including a ‘doctored autopsy photograph’ submitted in an NCIS report in 2004 to Congress. There’s more than enough evidence to support a formal inquest and criminal investigation by the Justice Department.
BETRAYAL reports the denial of responsibility and the cover-up to hide the truth of environmental contamination from veterans, their dependents, and the public at El Toro, once the premier Marine Corps jet fighter base. These include no usage records on TCE and other organic solvents used on the base for decades; Marine Corps’ denial of ownership of the TCE plume spreading into Orange County until a lawsuit forced the government to accept responsibility; loss of the official government contract procurement file for the municipal water purchase with the Irvine Ranch Water District; loss of all of the original well construction drawings; over 40 years of water distribution engineering drawings missing; no records on the dates the base wells were abandoned but several engineering drawings showing the base wells part of the water distribution system after the early purchase of a small quantity of softened municipal water; unexplained cut-off of pumping records, and a radiation contaminated hangar shuddered and sealed in 2012, ten years after the Navy reported the hangar free of radiation.
BETRAYAL provides the legal argument for presumptive disability compensation for Lejeune Marines who currently have access to the VA for 15 medical conditions associated with organic solvent and benzene exposure to contaminated well water on the base over a 30 year period (1953-1987). For other military installations that are on the EPA Superfund list of the most hazardous environmental site in the U.S., the VA Regional offices don’t have the scientific expertise to objectively evaluate disability claims from exposure to toxic chemicals.
BETRAYAL supports an argument for a Science Advisory Board within the VA with support staff of scientists with backgrounds in environmental exposure, environmental assessment, heath monitoring, and other relevant fields to objectively evaluate the risk of toxic exposure. Taking care of veterans should be one of this country’s highest priorities. There’s a critical need for medical monitoring of veterans exposed to toxic chemicals and the evaluation of disability claims from Superfund sites by scientists with environmental exposure backgrounds. The VA’s current system provides no routine medical care monitoring for those at risk for toxic exposures while veterans are left to their own resources and skills to file disability claims frequently denied by administrative staff without input from scientists with backgrounds in environmental exposures. For example, the disability denial rate for Camp Lejeune veterans is about 84%. You can get better odds at winning any given hand of blackjack.
Saturday, May 4, 2013
Thursday, March 14, 2013
Murder, Cocaine and Environmental Contamination in the Marine Corps
Tuesday, November 13, 2012
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Dioxin, TCE Drums,
U-235 and El Toro's Panhandle
Robert O'Dowd Salem-News.com
What
lurks beneath this old Marine base?
(IRVINE,
CA) - The Navy will label this fiction but if you wanted to hide environmental
contamination and avoid expensive remediation from weapons grade U-235, Agent
Orange, buried drums of TCE, then the proposed transfer of the 900+ acres of El
Toro’s panhandle from the FAA to the FBI makes sense.
The FBI plans to turn El Toro’s panhandle into a training
facility “with outdoor shooting ranges, explosions, helicopter landings and
impregnable fences,” according to the news story in the Orange County Register on
April 2, 2012, “U.S. reneging on land deal for wildlife corridor.”
El
Toro’s panhandle may be contaminated with weapons grade U-235, dioxin (the
toxic chemical in Agent Orange), and buried, rusting 55 gallon drums of TCE;
the government would label this as wild and unfounded speculation.
We
do know that one El Toro Marine who never served in Vietnam died from Agent Orange
exposure, the late Dr. Chuck Bennett over 12 years ago cited two Orange County
experts who examined soil samples from the panhandle and found weapons grade
U-235 (the stuff that makes the BANG in nuclear bombs); and the Navy ignored
testimony from an Orange County environmental expert who reported that TCE
drums were buried on the base to hide them from the Marine Corps Inspector
General. Public Works Department kept no record on the locations of the buried
drums, but the base’s panhandle would be the perfect place for a frontend
loader to bury the 55 gallon metal drums.
Even
Shakespeare’s Marcellus (“Something is rotten in the state of Denmark”) would
agree that the agreement to reserve a wildlife corridor in the panhandle by the
federal government made years ago and then reneged on this year has a rancid
smell to it.
In
2001, the Navy turned over stewardship of the 900+ acres of the El Toro
panhandle to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). According to the April
2nd Orange County Register news story, the FAA said “it no longer is able to
manage the land.” If the FAA can’t manage the property, then why not turn over
the property to Orange County or the City of Irvine? One good reason is that
the FAA would be liable for remediating contamination on the property with the
exception of two contaminated sites on this acreage under the Navy’s
remediation responsibility.
Part
of the agreement between the federal government and Orange Count in 2001 was
that a federal habitat reserve, the El Toro National Wildlife Refuge, would be
established and no new development would be allowed on the property. The
proposed reserve would be home to the highest regional concentrations of the
threatened coastal California gnatcatcher and coastal cactus wren.
Many
of us who were El Toro Marines remember the base’s magazine bunkers were
located in the panhandle. The rife range in the 1960s didn’t meet Marine Corps
standards since it only included firing position at 200 and 300 yards, not the
500 yards prone position required for rife qualifications. In the 1960s, El
Toro Marines went to Camp Pendleton every other year for rifle qualification
and used the El Toro range in the off year for practice. The panhandle is a
high risk wildfire area and the location of the base’s magazine bunkers and the
threat of wildfires were real.
Fires
and explosives do not make a good marriage. If wildfires had reached the
magazine bunkers while El Toro was an active military base, the inevitable
explosion would have been catastrophic. In 2007, the Santiago Canyon wildfire
burned most of the panhandle. If this happened when MCAS El Toro was an active
base, the ensuing explosions would have been heard in San Diego.
AGENT ORANGE AT EL TORO?
In the 1960s, the toxic effects of exposure to Agent Orange
were not widely known outside of scientific circles. This herbicide would more
been seen as an effective means of reducing the threat of wildfires in El
Toro’s panhandle. The facts are that Agent Orange was used at El Toro and at
least one Marine died from exposure to Agent Orange at the base.
Agent
Orange, a 50:50 mixture of 2,4-D and 2,4,5-T, was used by the military in
Vietnam from 1961 until 1971 to defoliate forested and rural land, depriving
the Vietcong of cover and food supply. Manufactured for the Defense Department
by Dow Chemical, Monsanto and others, Agent Orange was discovered to be
contaminated with 2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzodioxin (TCDD), an extremely toxic
dioxin compound. The Center for Disease Control reported TCDD as one of the
most toxic chemicals known to man.
Dioxin
is not found in nature; this is a manmade toxic chemical. The dioxin family
includes 75 chemicals; the most toxic is 2,3,7,8 TCDD and contaminated the
Agent Orange used in Vietnam. Dioxins are also produced by the combustion of
wood and chlorine, and by fires involving chlorinated benzenes and biphenyls
(e.g. PCBs). El Toro had 4 landfills and burning was used to reduce volume in
the landfills; 2 crash crew and fire fighting burn pits were in use, too.
Incomplete combustion from the landfill burnings and crash crew burn pits could
results in dioxin.
In
fact, dioxin was reported at two of El Toro’s contaminated sites: Site 1,
Explosive Ordnance Disposal Range, in the panhandle and Site 9, Crash Crew and
Fire Burning Pit, in the southwest quadrant of the base.
The
El Toro Marine veteran who transported materials to the base’s landfills died
in 2008 from CLL, a form of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, from exposure to Agent
Orange and benzene. This is not speculation; it’s the official opinion of VA
medical professionals and the VA Board of Veterans’ Appeals.
This
Marine was an Air Freight Operations Man at El Toro from February 1967 to May
1967 and from July 1969 to October 1970. The BVA found that, “the veteran was
noted to have been exposed to air pollution generated from the burnings at the
four landfills during his service in the October 2009 opinion. Benzene,
alkalating agents, aromatic amines, solvents used in chemicals, plastic,
rubber, exposure to petroleum products, paint, agricultural chemicals and
chemical exposures were known causes of leukemia. It was more likely than not
that the veteran's leukemia and lymphoma were caused from this in-service
chemical exposure at El Toro MCAS during his transport of hazardous materials
and his exposure to pollution from landfill burnings [our emphasis].”
The
Marine veteran never saw a penny of the disability compensation he was entitled
to. Following his death, his widow was awarded VA compensation (DIC), after a
successful appeal to the BVA.
The
BVA decision said that the Marine wore a gasmask. This should have been
adequate to protect him from inhalation of any dioxins at the base’s landfills.
But, if he lifted ‘empty 55 gallon drums’ of Agent Orange for transport to the
landfills while not wearing the gasmask or protective gloves, then dermal and
inhalation exposure to this herbicide and 2,3,7,8 TCDD could have occurred.
From
my experience, you can bet the Marine didn’t wear the gasmask when driving
hazardous materials to the landfills. For one, it would have been extremely
difficult to drive with the gasmask on and why wear the mask when loading
materials on a truck some distance from any landfills?
The
BVA said that, “A July 2004 opinion from Dr. D. K. noted that he had been treating
the Veteran for CLL, a form of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. The physician opined
that this cancer was related to the Veteran's exposure to Benzene and to Agent
Orange. An April 2008 opinion from Dr. D. K. noted that the Veteran's prognosis
was extremely poor and that he was considered terminal. The physician opined
that his CLL is most likely than not due to his Agent Orange exposure [our
emphasis].”
Could
this man’s death have been the result of dermal and inhalation exposure to
dioxin from ‘empty Agent Orange drums’ transported to the landfills? There’s no
record that the dead Marine wore protective gloves, leaving him open to Agent
Orange exposure from dermal contact and possibly inhalation exposure of AO
vapors while handling the drums.
In
a ‘Catch 22’ response, the VA denied our FOIA request for supporting
documentation on the veteran’s death, citing the need to obtain the approval of
the widow. There was no way for us to contact his widow since the BVA decision
redacted the veteran’s name. This wasn’t the proverbial ‘no ticket; not shirt’
but you get the idea.
A
high risk area from wildfires covers the 900+ acres in El Toro’s panhandle. In
2001, the panhandle was transferred to the FAA and not included in the GSA
public auction sale of the base in 2005. Without soil and groundwater samples
near the former magazine bunkers and other areas, there’s no way to know the
extent of Agent Orange contamination. But, given the risk of wildfires,
catastrophic explosions and Agent Orange’ effectiveness in reducing vegetation
growth, there’s no question that Marines with access to this herbicide in the
1960s/1970s could have made good use of it.
A
toxicologist told me that dioxin (TCDD) is also a by-product of incomplete
combustion which makes those exposed to inhalation of smoke from El Toro’s open
burn pits at risk of exposure to this carcinogen. El Toro’s landfills burned
solid waste, oil, paint residues, flammable fluids, jet fluid, industrial
solvents, aviation gasoline and other liquids into the air.
The
use of Agent Orange, an excellent herbicide, to control the growth of
vegetation and reduce the risk of wildfires at El Toro makes sense. In 2007,
the San Santiago Canyon wildfire burned most of the vegetation in the
panhandle.
Dioxin
in soil samples from the burn pits and landfills would not be unexpected since
according to EPA, “2,3,7,8-Tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin
(2,3,7,8-TCDD) is formed as an unintentional by-product of incomplete combustion.
It may be released to the environment during the combustion of fossil fuels and
wood, and during the incineration of municipal and industrial wastes.”
According
to the California Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC), there’s no
evidence from soil samples of elevated dioxin on the base.
ENVIROSTOR
Envirostor,
California’s Department of Toxic Substances Control public website provides
access to detailed information on hazardous waste and existing site cleanup
information for former MCAS El Toro.
DTSC’s
Envirostor reports 2,3,7,8 TCDD as a potential contaminant of concern for El
Toro.
However,
according to Mr. Quang Than, DTSC Project Manager for MCAS El Toro, no TCDD was
found at El Toro.
Mr.
Than said at El Toro’s Site 9, a crash crew and fire fighting burn pit within
MWSG-37, only low levels of a dioxin compound were found: “It [TCDD] was listed
as a potential chemical of concern (COC) but did not make the list of
(confirmed) COCs because the type of dioxin found at Site 9 has very low
concentrations.”
Neither
the Navy nor EPA lists 2,3,7,8 TCDD as a contaminant of concern for El Toro.
It’s
unclear whether any soil and/or groundwater samples were taken from the
panhandle’s magazine bunker acreage.
Since the panhandle remains federal property under the control of the
FAA, it’s highly unlikely that anyone in the federal government (EPA, Navy, FAA
or the FBI) is interested in taking soil/groundwater samples in the former
magazine bunker area.
Gasmasks
are uncomfortable. The Marine who died
from Agent Orange exposure may have not consistently wore the gasmask on trips
to the base’s landfills, leaving him open to exposure to dioxins from
incomplete combustion.
But,
other El Toro Marines reported that Agent Orange was used on the base.
OTHER MARINES TELL OF AGENT ORANGE USE
The
use of Agent Orange was reported to Salem-News.com by two Marine
veterans of MAG-11 (Marine Air Group-11). These Marines said they sprayed Agent
Orange around the fence lines and other areas on the base to control the growth
of vegetation.
One
of the Marine veterans is a prostate
cancer survivor. Prostate cancer is one of the illnesses associated
with exposure to dioxin. These men are now attempting to locate other MAG-11
veterans who sprayed Agent Orange at El Toro.
Another
Marine veteran who attended the Nuclear, Biological & Chemical (NBC)
Warfare training school at El Toro in the 1960s shared some of his experiences
with us via email. They include exposure to Agent Orange and Sarin. These are
definitely not the kind of toxins that should be used in a ‘training problem’
without regard to the health effects of those exposed to them.
In
fact, Sarin is a chemical nerve agent now seen as a weapon of mass destruction
under UN Resolution 687 (April 1991).
Sarin
causes the victim to loss control of bodily functions, vomit, defecate and
urinate until the individual becomes comatose and suffocates in a series of
convulsive spasms.
Today,
this Marine suffers from a variety of medical conditions that could be
associated with toxic exposures. However, the VA denied service connection to
most of his chronic medical conditions. He is now in the process of tracking
down other Marines who attended El Toro’s NBC training in an effort to confirm
his exposures to toxic chemicals. Any Marine who attended NBC
training in the 1960s and is willing to write a VA buddy letter for this Marine
can email Salem-News.at newsroom@salem-news.com. At his request, we
are withholding his name:
I just discovered your article
pertaining to El Toro Marine Air Base. I was stationed there in 1970 at the Nuclear,
Biological & Chemical Warfare training school. During that time we were
exposed to a variety of chemicals and hazardous materials. Since we were mostly
enlisted, after the “school-work” we were assigned “clean-up activities and
“gardening” in the “Vegetable patch”. We were instructed to spray chemicals
along the fence lines to kill the weeds and unwanted vegetation. Part of our
training was to witness and observe how quickly the chemicals could kill the
vegetables in the “patch” [corn, wheat, root vegetables, etc. In addition, part
of the training was with gas [possibly Sarin; though they never told us]; we
were led into Quonset huts and beyond a partition goats were also led in the
other side; they were killed by the gas. We were then instructed to inject
atropine into our thighs to counteract the effects of the gas. Before my
honorable discharge in 1971, I went through a physical and medical evaluation
board and was awarded 10% disability based on losing all of the hearing in my
left ear. Once discharged the VA down-graded this to 0% service-connected. I
never pursued appealing this for over 40 years. I finally re-opened my claim in
2010; still waiting to hear from the VA. Since that time I have been treated
for Diabetes Mellitus, Kidney failure, coronary artery disease [quintile
by-pass in 2006], diabetic neuropathy, and a host of other physical ailments.
Still
not convinced that Agent Orange wasn’t used on the base? Neither are we.
NUKES AT EL TORO?
Dead
men tell no tales, but those who publish their research go on helping people
long after they are gone. That is the case with the late Dr. Chuck Bennett,
former Chair of the Technical Subcommittee of El Toro’s Restoration Advisory
Board wrote a letter to the Fullerton Observer, dated May 29, 2000 entitled
"An Update on Critical Issues for the El Toro Base Closure". Dr.
Bennett died of a heart attack in December 2000.
Dr.
Bennett wrote, "Five decades of military operation have certainly had its
impact on the environment at El Toro. Over 400 underground storage tanks that
do not meet the 1998 Federal guidelines for storage use must be taken care of,
which means either removed or closed in place."
"It
will take years to clean up or take care of the messes that the DoN sprinkled
over 4500 acres of prime Orange County land. It may be prime land, but it sure
isn’t pristine land! The DoN has made it clear that they have no intention of
returning pristine land to the County. They will clean up the 4500 acres only
to the levels that the Regulatory Agencies require."
A
number of topics are discussed in Dr. Bennett's letter. One regards "an
important report" from Department of Navy consultants released in 2000,
about radionuclides in the groundwater at El Toro near the base’s four
landfills and the EOD, or Explosives Ordnance Disposal area.
Consultants
concluded at the time, that the only radionuclide of importance present at the
site was Uranium of natural origin. Dr. Bennett said that if it is of natural
origin the DoN would have no obligation to remediate the Uranium.
"But
the DoN has a bit of a problem," Dr. Bennett wrote.
"The
Uranium they found in Site 1 has too much Uranium 235 in it (N.B. it is the
U-235 in Uranium that makes nuclear power plants work and splits when an atom
bomb explodes). The amount of U-235 in the Site 1 samples is more than twice as
much as you would find in natural uranium and several outside experts have
confirmed that the Site 1 results demonstrate enriched uranium. If it is
enriched, it is manmade and not natural. If it is not natural, the DoN will
become liable for remediating all the Uranium. If it is shown to be enriched
Uranium at the base, don’t bother to ask me how it got there. Ask the
DoN."
Enriched
Uranium-235 has a half-life of 703 million years. Needless to say it will
around for a long time.
So
if nuclear waste exists at El Toro, how did it get there? An El Toro Marine,
who chose not to be named, served there in the 1950s. He explained:
“The
first use of small nuclear weapons (small enough to be on the hard points under
a Sky Hawk) was done by the Navy and quite possibly, Marine aviators in the
50s.
The
A-4 Sky Hawk was one of the Marine Corps' primary attack jets until they were
replaced in the early 1980s by the F/A-18 Hornet.”
The
former Marine said, "our squadrons worked out of El Toro and the test or
(tests) were actually carried out on the Yucca Flats (or wherever we did the
bulk of our ground testing which included even smaller nuclear weapons which
could be mounted on 105-155 artillery)." Now, this really gets interesting.
NAVY TOLD OF BURIED TCE DRUMS
Mr.
Don Zweifel, Restoration Advisory Board (RAB) member, reported to the Navy way
back on July 27, 2005 during public comments on “El Toro’s Draft Record of
Decision for Site 24, the Volatile Organic Solvent (VOC) Source Area” that
former El Toro employees told him of the practice of burying drums of
contaminants on the base.
No
records were maintained of where the barrels were buried and the Navy’s
official response was no remediation efforts would be undertaken unless the
buried barrels were found. Barring a miracle, it’s unlikely that the barrels
will spontaneously appear on the ground surface. Over time, the steel 55
gallons drums will rot and the toxic contaminants will be released into the
soil.
Although
this could be a tedious effort, the military has the means of detecting buried
metal containers. Although not suggested by Mr. Zweifel, a search of the 4,000
acres property by the military could locate the buried drums. Once found, the
drums could be removed and properly disposed of.
Why
wait for the drums to rot and endanger children and others? A proactive
remediation approach would avoid injuries from rotting containers spilling
their contents into the ground.
Review
showed that the Navy ignored Zweifel’s concerns about the need to find the
barrels, citing their policy, “The Department of the Navy (DON) also has a
comeback policy that states the circumstances under which the DON will return
to perform additional cleanup. One of those circumstances is the subsequent discovery
of additional contamination attributable to DON activities. This would allow
for additional investigation if buried barrels of contaminants where found
anywhere on Former MCAS El Toro property in the future.”
A
better alternative than to wait for the buried TCE drums to rot and empty their
contains into the soil and groundwater would be to extract the buried drums by
using similar ground penetrating technology employed by the U.S. Army at Camp
Carroll, South Korea.
The
U.S. Army and the Korean government are using ground penetrating technology to
locate hundred of buried drums of Agent Orange and other chemicals at Camp
Carroll in South Korea. The joint task force used a process called “Electrical
Resistivity” to locate and map abnormalities underground.
Lee Sun-Young, reporter for The Korea
Herald, broke story on July 9, 2011 on the use of ground penetrating
technology to locate the buried AO drums. According to Sun-Young, “A joint
Korea-US investigation team found signs that metallic objects, shaped like
drums, may be buried underground at one of the US military camps in Korea…the
will now take samples of soil from as far as 10 meters deep to verify a claim
by US veteran Steve House that he helped bury hundreds of drums believed to
contain Agent Orange near a helipad in Camp Carroll…geophysical surveys of the
helipad area found some anomaly.” The joint task force is co-chaired by OK Gon,
professor at Bookyung University and Colonel Joseph F. Birchmeier, U.S. Army.
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