[CPEO-MEF] Toxics? What Toxics?

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California
ORANGE COUNTY WEEKLY
Toxics? What Toxics?
Agran and Irvine’s about-face on El Toro contamination
by Anthony Pignataro

Depending on whatever’s politically expedient at that moment, Irvine
Mayor Larry Agran and other city officials have espoused radically
different views on toxic contamination at the old El Toro Marine Corps
Air Station. Sometimes they say the base is an environmental nightmare;
other times it’s prime park land.

In an April 6 Los Angeles Times piece, reporter Jean O. Pasco identified
a zone euphemistically called "Anomaly Area 3" that presents the first
of what could be many land-development headaches plaguing the Great
Park. It seems that part of the base is so contaminated the Navy won’t
even include it in the 3,500-acre land auction set to take place in
June.

Area Anomaly 3 is part of an old landfill on the base’s northeastern
corner, near the intersection of Irvine Boulevard and Marine Way.
Approximately 800 feet long and 30 feet deep, the dump contains
extremely hazardous construction debris and, the Navy says, dangerous
levels of asbestos, arsenic, benzopyrene and petroleum hydrocarbons.

According to Irvine’s Great Park plan, the dumpsite would be smack in
the middle of 1,100 homes. Unless Irvine wants to dump the houses and
turn the site into an Asbestos Land theme park, this presents a major
stumbling block.

But these days, Irvine officials just don’t see it. To them, nothing
stands in the way of converting El Toro into a developer-friendly
collection of homes, offices, big-box retail outlets and, if there’s any
land left, parks. An anonymous city official writing on Len Kranser’s El
Toro Information website asserted, "We do not see [the contaminated
dump] as a problem."

This article can be viewed at:
http://www.ocweekly.com/ink/03/33/news-pignataro.php

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