EL TORO’S MUNICIPAL WATER SAVED LIVES

(IRVINE, CA) – The death knell for Marine Corps Air Station El Toro, California, once the premier Marine Corps air station, was sounded in 1985 when trichloroethylene (TCE) was found in three wells during a routine well inspection by the Orange County Water District (OCWD).  Two wells were off the base, the other on the base.

By 1990, El Toro was placed on the National Priority List (EPA Superfund), made the Navy’s 1993 BRAC hit list, shut down operations after 56 years of service in 1999, and sold at a public auction in 2005 by the Navy to a Heritage Fields LLC, a venture of land developers.     

The Navy spent hundreds of millions in remediation of soil and groundwater contamination. Even so, the $650 million from the sale of base had to put them in the black. 

No efforts were made to contact veterans of the base who may have been exposed to toxic chemicals.

There is extensive evidence of soil and groundwater contamination with organic solvents like TCE, PCE, vinyl chloride,  benzene, petroleum products, including contamination of several base wells.   

The Navy’s position is that the wells were abandoned years ago. They cite no pumping records after December 1950, together with the purchase of municipal water from the Metropolitan Water District in 1951 and later from the Irvine Ranch Water District in 1969 as evidence the base wells were abandoned.  Questions about the reasons for purchases go unanswered since the government’s contract files are either destroyed or lost.   

I did some back of the envelope calculations for the earlier contract with MWD.  The MWD contract provided for the delivery of one cubic foot/second of water for both El Toro and the Santa Ana Air Facility. The United States Geological Survey defines cubic foot per second (cfs) as “the flow rate or discharge equal to one cubic foot of water per second or about 7.5 gallons per second.” Converting the MWD’s one cubic foot per second into gallons equals about 648,000 gallons/day, (7.5 x 60 x 60 x 24) or about 450 gallons per minute, which is about half of the maximum combined flow of the Navy’s wells of 900 gallons per minute for El Toro alone. 

As a result of a property annexation, the MWD contract was superseded in July 1969 with a contract from the Irvine Ranch Water District (IRWD). The IRWD contract required the district to make available 3,500 gallons per minute to El Toro. By 1969, the IRWD purchase would have allowed the base to abandon all of the wells.      

I don’t know about you, but unless there’s something wrong with the water, why buy municipal water when you can get all the free water you need from base wells?

Were the base wells contaminated with volatile organic compounds as early as 1951?  If so, then why the limited purchase of softened water from MWD?  

Now, if you said that the softened water was probably purchased to blend the hardened water from the base wells by reducing the level of total dissolve solids (“salts”), then you have hit on something.

Hard water can be corrosive to water supply pipes, pumps and other equipment.  But, to walk away from productive water wells to purchase municipal water when the wells had years of useful life left, and the initial purchase won’t meet demand requirements, just doesn’t make sense.

The shallow aquifer under the base had very high levels of total dissolved solids (“salts”).  Evidence supports that base well screen intervals may have been in the shallow aquifer.  In 1998, the Navy sealed Well #4 and found that 50 feet of the well screen was in the SGU (shallow groundwater unit). 

The original well construction drawings are missing and without a physical inspection of the wells, no one knows the location of the wells screens. 

The Navy had the opportunity to inspect all of the wells before sealing them in concrete.  Only Well #4 was inspected to locate the wells screen interval.

All the base wells were located in the path of the TCE plume in the Marine Wing Support  Group 37 (MWSG-37) area. 

The primary source of the TCE plume and ten other contaminated sites was the 200 acres belonging to the MWSG-37, my former duty assignment in the 1960’s.

During an internet search, I knew I was lucky to be alive when the hangar I worked-in and slept-in on duty watch was identified as one of the sources of the TCE plume and the location of a former Radium 226 paint room, the source of radiation contamination in the north mezzanine.        

I still remember walking through the hangar door into Bldg. 296, climbing two flights to the upper mezzanine, walking about 50 feet or so along an open corridor overlooking the hangar bay and entering the Wing Supply Support Division’s office (WSSD).   As soon as I opened the door, you couldn’t avoid Master Gunnery Sergeant (MGySgt) Jackson who sat like a Spinx, guarding the entrance to the 3rd Wing Supply Officer’s office.  If you looked like you didn’t belong in WSSD, maybe even lost, there was no need to worry, MGSgt Jackson would set you straight in a few minutes.[i]

It’s not  that he was mean or a hard ass, but the aura he gave off prevented that kind of familiarity. To me, he looked like a giant bull dog with a weathered face, seldom smiled and knew the nuts and bolts of logistics better than most highly paid Pentagon logisticians.  Most junior enlisted Marines  were teenagers and someone in their forty’s like MGySgt Jackson just looked older than dirt.

He was a heavy set man who seemed to be permanently welded to his chair but stopped you in your tracks with a piercing low pitch voice, “You need something, Marine?”  Definitely not someone you would want to lock horns with. Rumor had it that each service records of incoming enlisted Marines were screened for their GCT (General Classification Test, equivalent to IQ).  Those with higher GCT’s were assigned to office work; others went to one of the supply warehouse to hump boxes.

I still remember an encounter between MGySgt Jackson and a young 2nd Lieutenant who was new to the WSSD.  During the course of the discussion (loud enough so everyone nearby could hear the conversation), the naive Lieutenant made the point that he outranked MGSgt Jackson  who then told him, “Lieutenant, you don’t ever want to put that to the test.”

I wondered if career Marines like MGySgt Jackson were still alive.  No question that the unknown contamination of the soil, groundwater and air (vapor intrusion) was a health risk for those who lived and worked at El Toro.  For those of us in Bldg. 296, the risks may have been greater. 

For those of us who were stationed at El Toro, the contamination of soil and groundwater could be used as a movie script for the perfect environmental crime. Dump thousands of pounds of trichloroethylene (TCE) and other toxic chemicals into the soil and groundwater; watch a toxic plume of chemicals cut a path through the base wells; deny anyone was exposed to chemicals; lose or trash original well construction and water distribution drawings; sell thousands of acres at a public auction sale; and pocket a nice piece of change from the sale of the former base to a land developer. In this case, the victims are mostly invisible Marine veterans, who have no clue of what hit ‘em. And, like veterans everywhere, the only people who care what happens to them are their families and other veterans. I hope that MGSgt Jackson made it. 

Robert O'Dowd

Robert O’Dowd served in the 1st, 3rd and 4th Marine Aircraft Wings during 52 months of active duty in the 1960s. While at MCAS El Toro for two years, O’Dowd worked and slept in a Radium 226 contaminated work space in Hangar 296 in MWSG-37, the most industrialized and contaminated acreage on the base.

Robert is a two time cancer survivor and disabled veteran. Robert graduated from Temple University in 1973 with a bachelor’s of business administration, majoring in accounting, and worked with a number of federal agencies, including the EPA Office of Inspector General and the Defense Logistics Agency.

After retiring from the Department of Defense, he teamed up with Tim King of Salem-News.com to write about the environmental contamination at two Marine Corps bases (MCAS El Toro and MCB Camp Lejeune), the use of El Toro to ship weapons to the Contras and cocaine into the US on CIA proprietary aircraft, and the murder of Marine Colonel James E. Sabow and others who were a threat to blow the whistle on the illegal narcotrafficking activity. O’Dowd and King co-authored BETRAYAL: Toxic Exposure of U.S. Marines, Murder and Government Cover-Up. The book is available as a soft cover copy and eBook from Amazon.com. See: http://www.amazon.com/Betrayal-Exposure-Marines-Government-Cover-Up/dp/1502340003.