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Toxic Soup du Jour

Posted by Matt Coker in A Clockwork Orange

July 24, 2008 1:14 PM

Permalink | Comments (4)

hazmat.jpgEight to 10 years ago, when South Countians, prodded by Irvine, wanted to stop plans for a commercial airport from being built over the soon-to-be abandonded El Toro Marine Corps Air Station, they pointed to studies showing a toxic plume from years of oil, fuel and chemicals spilling onto, running off of and being dumped over the base had leeched into the city of Irvine's ground water, making an airport incompatible as a future use. Yours truly even wrote about it here.

A couple years later, when powerful commercial airport advocates, prodded by John Wayne Airport-impacted Newport Beach, wanted to stop the momentum building for a Great Park at El Toro, they pointed to studies showing a toxic plume from years of oil, fuel and chemicals spilling onto, running off of and being dumped over the base had leeched into the city of Irvine's ground water, making a park incompatible as a future use. My pal Anthony "The Pig" Pignataro even wrote about it here.

In 2003, when it was looking more like a park, and not an airport, was coming to El Toro, Pignataro wrote here about how then-mayor, now-Great Park Corp. Chairman and Irvine City Councilman Larry Agran would say there was or was not contamination on the site depending on which argument best suited his point at the particular time.

When the keys to El Toro were handed over to Irvine in 2005, the toxic soup talk went away. Now it's back, from the most unlikely of sources. Forces opposed to Agran's glad-handing handling of park development report on newsOC.org that the Great Park Corp. is covering up toxic contamination at the future site of homes ringing the park.

This cover-up has not been reported by the Orange County Register, Los Angeles Times, Irvine Inquirer, the Trichloroethylene Tattler nor even your favorite muckraking alt. weekly. Nope, the news source that broke this story is Financial Times News. Printouts of FTN's "A Toxic Danger: El Toro Base Model, Great Park Caught Up in Massive Cover-Up" began appearing in Irvine mailboxes over the past couple weeks. The newsOC.org site has a link where you can download the story.

But when an item about the story was posted on the South County Redfin real estate blog, commenters began asking who is the Financial Times News. No one could seem to find a link to such a site or publisher of such a media outlet. There is a Financial Times newspaper, of course, but one has to subscribe to access the content, and the paper's fonts don't match up with the printout that was distributed in Irvine.

As folks were still scratching their heads over that one, a reporter from the Oregon-based Salem News showed up in town to stir up the toxic soup. Tim King's Wednesday story, "Sick Marines and Contaminated Water: Questions Surround El Toro Marine Air Base," includes a video and only one very loose connection between Irvine and his readership 968 miles away: Trichloroethylene (TCE), which either is or is not found in unhealthful levels in Irvine's ground water depending on who is doing the testing and spinning. TCE has been detected in Salem's ground water.

The soup thickens.

 

Comments (4)

  1. oh no says:
    July 25, 2008 06:09

    You guys stopped the airport--STOP THE GREAT PORK!!!

  2. News Depends On Who Pays For Advertising says:
    July 27, 2008 13:05

    Well Coke, head over to Heritage Library and find out for us - is a plume of toxic soup migrating under Woodbridge and other communities or not?

    Should we care?

    It seems like developers would care a whole lot - and would not want this type of stuff in the papers every day. Real estate developers and related industries bring in the majority of "news" papers' revenues, so I can see why "news" papers would be reluctant to print these types of stories, though the L.A. Times, the Washington Post and Salem-News all had articles related to the same subject this week. It is doubtful we'd see articles like this in the Rag and the L.A. Times OC edition or the Daily Plot for that matter.

  3. Robert O'Dowd says:
    August 25, 2008 06:15

    Salem-News.com features a military section as part of its readership service. Tim King, reporter for Salem-News.com, was stationed at El Toro in the 1980s. Salem-News had completed a series on TCE contamination at Camp Lejeune when Marine veterans from the North Carolina base told Tim about my bog on former MCAS El Toro (www.mwsg37.com). Like Tim, I was stationed at El Toro, only recently learned it had been an EPA Superfund site, closed in 1999 and sold at a public auction in 2005. Both Tim and I had been assigned to MWSG-37, EPA Site 24--the source of the TCE plume spreading into Orange County. At El Toro, I had worked and slept on duty watch in Bldg. 296, one of the huge maintenance hangars at Site 24 and "ground zero" for TCE. I managed to survive stage 2/3 bladder cancer and other illnesses linked to TCE exposure. New Jersey, my home, is even further from El Toro than Salem, OR. There is no legal requirement for the government to notify veterans who may have been exposed to TCE and other VOCs found on a military base, even one that reaches the Superfund status of an El Toro. Why my continuing interest in a former Marine base thousands of miles from my home? If you wore the uniform, you would know the answer. The Corps is a brotherhood. Other Marine veterans of El Toro exposed to TCE have no idea of what hit them. I started the bog this year to spread the word to other Marine veterans and dependents. By the way, Tim King is now embedded for several weeks with an Oregon National Guard unit in Iraq. Semper Fi.

  4. Carol says:
    August 25, 2008 19:39

    I live, day to day, with a man who was contaminated with TCE. He suffers with a multitude of very painfull illnesses. Many of my friends have been contaminated with TCE. They too have very painfull ilnesses, many have lost family members to illnesses we feel are related to TCE contamination. A community near Asheville, NC has been contaminated with TCE. Residents in that area are reporting very serious health issues, including early death. Don't make light of TCE. No one should ever be exposed to TCE's horror again! Senators Elizabeth Dole and Hillary Rhodham Clinton are sponsoring legislation (S1911, The TCE Reduction Act of 2007) which would protect drinking water from this very toxic chemical. S1911 has been approved by the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works. Thank you, Senator Barbara Boxer, for putting S1911 on the legislative agenda. S1911 has not been voted on by the full Congress. If you care about your children and grandchildren, contact your senators and representative and tell them to support S1911. Please tell them to do everything possible to improve the Intigrated Risk Information System (IRIS). It has, according to Congressman Sensenbrenner, become the "go to source" for information on the risks associated with chemicals. Congressman Sensenbrenner also says that IRIS has, at the current rate of risk assesment, a 35 year backlog. In order for S1911 to be effective, IRIS must function more effectively. Even if TCE were put on the IRIS list of chemicals to be evaluated, it could conceivably be 35 years before its health risks are assessed.

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