[CPEO-MEF] Almaden Air Force Station, CA

[Lenny Siegel <lsiegel@cpeo.org>]

Legislators push to clean up summit
U.S. WOULD PAY TO RESTORE OLD BASE AT MOUNT UMUNHUM
By Paul Rogers
San Jose Mercury News
Wednesday, August 28, 2002


With Silicon Valley spread below on one side and Monterey Bay in the
distance, U.S. Rep. Mike Honda on Tuesday stepped up efforts to win
federal funding for a long-stalled toxics cleanup at an abandoned Air
Force base on the summit of one of Santa Clara County's landmark
mountain peaks.

...

Despite thousands of acres of public parkland on its slopes, most
Silicon Valley residents know "Mount Um" only for the abandoned Air
Force radar building that looks like a sugar cube on its summit. The Air
Force closed the Almaden Air Force Station in the early 1980s and sold
the peak in 1986 to a government parks agency, the Midpeninsula Regional
Open Space District.

Since the late 1970s, the open space district, based in Los Altos and
funded by property taxes, has been buying land across the mountain. It
now owns more than 15,000 acres, open for hiking, biking and horse riding.

But the Air Force base site has sat like a ghost town, off limits to the
public because it contains crumbling buildings and Quonset huts
contaminated with asbestos, lead paint and solvents.

...

for the entire story, see

http://www.bayarea.com/mld/mercurynews/news/local/3953799.htm

-- 


Lenny Siegel
Director, Center for Public Environmental Oversight
c/o PSC, 278-A Hope St., Mountain View, CA 94041
Voice: 650/961-8918 or 650/969-1545
Fax: 650/961-8918
<lsiegel@cpeo.org>
http://www.cpeo.org

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