ARMY DEFIES OWN GUIDANCE

[CGumbi@igc.org]

From: CGumbi@aol.com (Curt Gandy)

ARMY DEFIES ITS OWN GUIDANCE AND MEANINGFUL CITIZENS INVOLVEMENT!

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ARMY STIFLES CITIZEN PARTICIPATION

The recently elected Community Co-Chair of the Fort Ord Restoration Advisory
Board (RAB) has been suspended from the Board, along with 9 other senior
members of the RAB, pending some unspecified "re-submission" process . The
RAB is a citizens oversight committee, its charter is to review and comment
on the cleanup and suability of transferring severely contaminated,
"Superfund site" property. 

What is the point? By this suspension action the Army is, in effect, forcing
a referendum on me, the Community Co-Chair even though I was elected to serve
a term of one year. Nothing in the By-laws prevents me from completing the
six months remaining in my term. The Army's effort is a punitive action
against one who is very active in the base cleanup process, and happens to be
the Director of the local non-profit that originally petitioned the Army to
establish the citizens oversight committee (RAB) over two years ago. Of the
nine (9) suspended, five (5) are public citizens who now have no status as
RAB members after having already completed the selection process two years
ago. In the meantime, the four (4) others are still actively representing
their respective agencies. However, I have no status as the duly elected
Community Co-Chair, according to the ARMY! Again I point out that Fort Ord
By-laws are a "prescription for prostration". The Army has forced defective
By-laws on this RAB in an effort to render us ineffective. We have had
nothing but problems ever since their adoption. There is no incentive for
the Army to try and correct this convoluted situation, because they actually
benefit from having a dysfunctional and ineffective RAB.

FORT ORD RAB NEEDS TO SCRAP BY-LAWS AND ADOPT NEW BYLAWS AND PROCEDURES!

Our ridiculously convoluted RAB By-laws are a very serious problem which
fundamentally undermines the whole RAB/ community participation concept. The
Army understands the "Procedures and By-laws" problem very clearly and they
play on those weakness; especially around RAB Membership and RAB Agendas. I
sincerely believe the Army is counting on the Fort Ord RAB to fail in its
mission, (we have so far!). 

What the Army is doing now, under the justification of our severely defective
and convoluted By-laws and Procedures, is just another maneuver to control
the content, quality, and volume of the work coming out of the Fort Ord RAB.
 This is occurring at a very critical time in the cleanup and reuse process.
 The Army does this by controlling the our RAB Membership and our RAB Meeting
Agendas! 
The Base Environmental Coordinator has, at her discretion, allowed RAB
members and non-RAB members to be carried on the Board's roster in defiance
of our By-laws. By doing this, she as the Army Co-Chair of the RAB controls
the quorum of our RAB meetings. Subsequently, the Army has controlled the
business the RAB addresses at its meetings. For four (4) consecutive months
after the January 1996 RAB elections the RAB failed to achieve a quorum. This
occurred because the Army Co-Chair/ BEC refused to provide me and other RAB
members with an updated list of Board members, and when a list was provided
to us it was inaccurate and unusable. One glaring misfeasance came to light
when I discovered that Army Personnel were being carried on the RAB's rolls
as community membership. By diluting the actual membership list, the Army
prevented the community members form correcting deficiencies in the By-laws
and Procedures.

ARMY FIGHTS COMMUNITY OVER RAB AGENDA

The community's struggles with the Army Co-Chair, over the RAB's meeting
Agendas are well documented. The EPA had to mediate a Fort Ord RAB meeting
Agenda several months ago. It was a marathon conference call that left
everyone exhausted. What is clear is that the Army, through its involvement
in the RAB process at Fort Ord, has no compunction with regard to applying an
surreptitious and underhanded process vested in debasing the community's
right to have an "early and meaningful involvement" in the cleanup and
conversion process for this Army "Superfund site". 

I find it deeply disturbing that the polluter, the "Primary Responsible
Party" who is responsible for creating this national tragedy, in the process
costing taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars to create, and now costing
us hundreds of millions of dollars to cleanup, is now able to get away with
such gross nonfeasance, misfeasance, and malfeasance in its cleanup and
public involvement requirements. Even more disturbing is that the Army is
effectively excluding the taxpaying citizens it is sworn to protect and
defend from having any meaningful involvement, in defiance of Presidential,
Secretary of Defense, Secretary of The Army Directives, and its own published
RAB guidance. 

FORT ORD RAB FAILS ITS MISSION

This could not come at a worse time. RAB members and the public are
struggling to prepare 3 sets of comments. One on the CEQA required Draft EIR
for the base reuse plan, and the other two are on the Army's two "Proposed
Plans" for the "Beach Firing Ranges" and the OU-2 Landfill. The close of
these "public comment periods" are: July 1st for DEIR "public hearing";
 July 15th ,DEIR "public comment" closes; July 8th "public comment" for both
of Army's "Proposed Plans" for sand dunes and landfill with CAMU. 

At the June 27th RAB Meeting, A fellow RAB member and I both submitted
requests to the BCT and the Army, informing them that a "ROD Amendment" must
be carried out for the OU-2 Landfill (because Army now proposes to exhume a
major part of the Land fill, and also proposes to create a Corrective Action
Management Unit (CAMU) in which it intends to entomb most of the hazardous
RCRA wastes, in an unlined leaking landfill site) 

By Curt Gandy
Executive Director
Fort Ord Toxics Project
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