[CPEO-MEF] HEALTH, VOCs: Fort Ord (CA) vets "worry polluted base made them ill"

[Lenny Siegel <LSiegel@cpeo.org>]

What Lies Beneath: Vets worry polluted base made them ill

By MARTHA MENDOZA, JULIET LINDERMAN and JASON DEAREN 
Associated Press
February 23, 2022
 
	
FORT ORD NATIONAL MONUMENT, Calif. — For nearly 80 years, recruits reporting to central California’s Fort Ord considered themselves the lucky ones, privileged to live and work amid sparkling seas, sandy dunes and sage-covered hills.

But there was an underside, the dirty work of soldiering. Recruits tossed live grenades into the canyons of “Mortar Alley,” sprayed soapy chemicals on burn pits of scrap metal and solvents, poured toxic substances down drains and into leaky tanks they buried underground.

When it rained, poisons percolated into aquifers from which they drew drinking water.

Through the years, soldiers and civilians who lived at the U.S. Army base didn’t question whether their tap water was safe to drink.

…

For the entire article, see
https://www.nbcrightnow.com/politics/what-lies-beneath-vets-worry-polluted-base-made-them-ill/article_d7892ba7-46fe-570b-9f09-a2fbc150997f.html

—

Lenny Siegel
Executive Director
Center for Public Environmental Oversight
A project of the Pacific Studies Center
LSiegel@cpeo.org
P.O. Box 998, Mountain View, CA 94042
Voice/Fax: 650-961-8918
http://www.cpeo.org
Author: DISTURBING THE WAR: The Inside Story of the Movement to Get Stanford University out of Southeast Asia - 1965–1975 (See http://a3mreunion.org)

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