FOTP sues DoD

["Michael R. Meuser" <meuser@mapcruzin.com>]

Hello - I thought this would be of interest to any groups involved 
with base cleanup and reuse.

Mike Meuser

------- Forwarded Message From: Mike <mbarton@got.net>

Dear Folks here is an important announcement: 
Tuesday June 3 at 12:30 p.m. the Fort Ord Toxics 
Project is holding a press conference in front of the 
Colton bldg in Monterey to announce a lawsuit it is 
filing against the department of defense and the 
department of the army for the following reasons.

The Fort Ord Toxics Project and the California Public 
Interest Group is filing notice today of intent to sue 
against the Department of Defense and the United 
States Department of Energy for failure to clean up 
chemical warfare agents, unexploded munitions, 
toxic waste dumps and lead strewn beaches at Fort 
Ord. The closed former military training base, which 
is on the Superfund National Priority List, is slated to 
be handed over to the state for use as a recreational 
park. The suit announced today, would require the 
Army to re-draft its current cleanup plan to comply 
with the federal Comprehensive Environmental 
Response, Compensation and Liability Act (CERCLA 
- better known as Superfund) and the Resource 
Conversation and Recovery Act (RCRA) which 
regulate site cleanup and hazardous waste.

The suit focuses on three areas of neglect:

Chemical Warfare Agents and Unexploded 
Ordinances. Although the Army has maintained that 
no chemical warfare agents were used at Fort Ord, 
vials of several such chemicals, including phosgene 
and mustard gas, were discovered in a field soon to 
be transferred to civilian use. By the Army's own 
admission, Fort is also scattered with unexploded 
munitions of various kinds. But because the Army 
doesn't consider these munitions to be "hazardous 
waste" under Superfund and RCRA, it has no plans 
for removing them subject to the requirements of 
these two federal laws.

Hazardous Waste Dumps. Toxins leaching from 
several landfills on the base, including 
trichloroethylene (TCE) are suspected of 
contaminating a number of drinking wells used by the 
neighboring city of Marina. Tens of thousands of 
residents currently obtain drinking water from wells 
situated within three miles of the former training base. 
The Army now plans to dump more hazardous waste 
into these unlined landfills, including dioxins, 
solvents, heavy metals and petroleum wastes.

Lead Contaminated Beaches. The Army is also 
proposing to leave three and a half miles of beach 
front contaminated with literally tons of lead bullet 
fragments. The agency is planning to clean up only 
about 4% of the beaches and will leave behind 
unacceptably high concentrations of lead in the sand. 
The Army's own risk assessment indicates that the 
lead left behind would pose a significant health risk to 
future beach goers, particularly children. Lead is 
highly toxic and may impair mental development at 
very low doses.

The action, if successful, would set an important legal 
precedent nationwide. Under CERCLA, cleanups 
performed on land owned by private companies are 
generally protected from lawsuits until after the 
cleanup is completed. Federal agencies, however, 
are not accorded the same protection, though no 
court has yet ruled that federal cleanup plans for site 
mitigation can be challenged before the cleanup is 
completed.

"If we're successful, federal agencies across the 
nation will be more accountable to the public if they 
try to leave behind a toxic mess," said Scott Allen. 
one of the attorneys at Gilles, Minor & Sullivan in 
Monterey. "It just makes sense - the public should 
have the right to challenge a deficient cleanup plan at 
the front end not after years of expensive mitigation." 

 It would help if any of your group's members could be 
there to show support for FOTP's efforts. Thanks

Michael R. Meuser
MapCruzin(tm)
Sustainable Economic & Environmental Knowledge
408-458-4245
meuser@mapcruzin.com
http://www.mapcruzin.com