Tuesday, January 30, 2001

By Steve Liewer
Yokosuka bureau chief

Yokosuka Naval Base is not unique in finding toxic secrets in its soil.

The Department of Defense has at least 1,800 toxic waste sites in the United States alone, said Saul Bloom, director of ArcEcology, a San Francisco consultant on hazardous military waste. There are dozens, maybe hundreds, more sites overseas.

"There is not a (U.S.) military base in the world that doesn’t have some soil or groundwater contamination. That is just a given," Gary Vest, the principal assistant deputy undersecretary of defense for environmental security, told the Boston Globe in 1999. "I will stipulate there is contamination everywhere."

For Patrick Lynch, an environmental engineer who started the consulting firm Clearwater Revival Co., the topic quite literally hits close to home. He lives just 200 feet from the former Alameda Point Naval Air Station, Calif., and his company is now working to clean the place up.

According to his company’s Web site, www.toxicspot.com, at least 25 hazardous-waste sites have been discovered on the 2,700-acre base, which was repeatedly cited for environmental violations before its closure in 1997.

Lynch said more fuel was spilled there during the air station’s 58-year history than was spilled by the tanker Exxon Valdez in 1989.

That accident, which occurred when the tanker hit a reef in Prince William Sound, Alaska, spilled 11 million gallons of oil.

The United States also left behind horrific messes at Clark Air Base and Subic Bay Naval Base when the Philippines government cancelled U.S. leases in 1991, Lynch said. The bases became heavily industrialized with airfields, ship repair docks, and petroleum tanks — all of which generate significant amounts of hazardous waste, he said.

After the eruption of Mount Pinatubo, thousands of refugees moved onto a site once occupied by Clark’s motor pool.

According to a 1999 Boston Globe investigation, many children became sick after drinking water from a well contaminated with mercury, gasoline and bacteria.

The Globe said pollution at Subic has not been studied as thoroughly at Clark, but toxic waste has been discovered in at least 10 places, and the U.S. is known to have pumped millions of gallons a day of untreated sewage into the bay. To complicate matters further, the Philippines’ own pollution standards are weak and unevenly enforced.

Lynch said the United States did little to clean up the bases before they left, and took with them most records about their activities there. So far, the United States has not contributed to cleanup efforts as it has at former bases in Europe and Japan.

Bloom said much of the damage at military bases was inflicted during World War II and in the decades following, when the Department of Defense knew little about the hazards. At sites in Japan, clean-up is even more complicated. Often the source of a spill is impossible to determine because the the bases were controlled by the Japanese until 1945.

"Oftentimes these records have been lost or misplaced," he said.

Until 1991, U.S. domestic bases weren’t required to follow environmental laws. Since then, Bloom said, the military has become much more ecologically sensitive. But it also has been overwhelmed by the scope of the job, and by its own red tape.

"We’re spending a ton of money on clean-up projects," he said.

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