NAVY TO CLEAN UP TOXIC HOT SPOTS; PARTS OF PORT HUENEME BECAME DUMPING GROUND FOR WASTES DURING WWII.

Byline: Deborah Sullivan Daily News Staff Writer

A 33-acre field on the western side of Port Hueneme is a toxic sandbox of petroleum byproducts, solvents and pesticides, all left over from a time when trash - even the hazardous variety - was merely buried and forgotten.

Now, as part of a nationwide environmental effort by the military, the Navy is making plans to clean up the poisoned dirt pile.

The Department of Defense has called for reviews of how waste has been handled for decades at the Port Hueneme Naval Construction Battalion Center, all the way back to the World War II era, according to Linda Wadley, base public affairs officer.

That has meant gathering information on the 33-acre plot, called Site 14, and about 20 other potentially toxic spots around the base to find whether there are problems and, if so, how to solve them.

To create a map of possible hot spots, base officials and an advisory board examined aerial photos and archival records, and they also interviewed base personnel about what activities happened where.

Site 14 is the biggest potential problem area so far, said Gail Pringle, an environmental protection specialist at the base.

The field was originally used in agriculture, but became a landfill for military waste during the ship-building burst of World War II, Pringle said. Soils dredged up off the coast were dumped there, along with oily bilge water, transformer fluids, gasoline, solvents, thinners, pesticides, rubbish and ash residue.

After identifying what chemicals were in the soil, scientists calculated what risks they posed to humans.

What are the cancer risks?

Anna Spanopoulos, 41, co-chairwoman of the advisory board, said members' first question was does the amount of contaminants in the soil raise the risk of cancer higher than the risk otherwise occurring in the area?

``And the answer in this case is yes,'' Spanopoulos said. The increased cancer risks are small, but any higher than one in 10,000 is considered unacceptable, she said.

Depending on the potential use of the land and the amount of exposure, scientists found an increased cancer risk between 18 extra cases per 10,000 people and 41 cases per 100 million people.

Some of the chemicals found in the soil are also known to cause skin, eye or respiratory irritation or nervous system problems.

Scientists have begun monitoring 80 test wells throughout the base to determine if any contaminants have leached into the groundwater from Site 14 or any other toxic spots, said Steve McCarel, an environmental engineer at the base. Slight concentrations of heavy metals - including arsenic, antimony and selenium - have been found in the upper aquifer in the first round of tests, but it is not yet known whether those metals occur naturally or result from Navy operations, he said.

Small amounts of hydrocarbons also were found in groundwater just below the surface. Further tests will yield more information about what might be in the water and where it came from, McCarel said.

The Navy has picked a potential solution of capping Site 14 with a geosynthetic clay liner - a sort of high-tech Tupperware lid for toxic waste.

The liner, made of synthetic fabric infused with absorbent clay, would expand to form a water-proof barrier to keep rain from washing into the site and to prevent toxic chemicals from leaching into the groundwater.

``Either you get rid of the toxic - get it away from the human or the ecology - or put barriers in place to keep the two from coming into contact,'' McCarel said.

The liner would cost about $3.3 million to install, compared with more than $62 million to excavate and remove the contaminated soil.

Plans for monitoring site

To make sure the liner works as planned, the Navy would install monitoring wells at the site. Scientists would test the wells regularly for 10 to 20 years to detect any problem immediately if one occurred, McCarel said.

In addition, McCarel is creating a geographical computer model showing every sewer, well, water and electric line on the base, and pollution-monitoring schedules would be added.

``Even if the Navy base closed, that information would be on a CD-ROM, and you could turn it over to whoever would take over the base,'' Pringle said.

The clay liner may not be a permanent answer, said Spanopoulos, who formerly worked as an environmental scientist. The toxic materials would probably need to be treated or removed if the area were ever used for housing, she said.

But for now the solution satisfies her.

``I live at the Channel Islands Beach Community Services District, and we have water wells right there,'' she said, ``and I wanted to make sure that, if there was contamination at the base, it didn't impact our water supply.''

Murray Rosenbluth, 66, who also serves on the advisory board, said he considers the capping proposal technically correct and cost-effective.

Environmental protection at the base today is vastly different from the crude techniques of the 1940s and '50s, Pringle said.

Now, she said, the military goal ``is for the Department of Defense to be the nation's leader in environmental quality - to lead the way.''

PUBLIC REVIEW

A public hearing on Site 14 will take place at 8:30 p.m. Nov. 6, at the Orvene Carpenter Community Center at 550 Park Ave., Port Hueneme. The base is also accepting written comments about the cleanup proposal. For more information, call Linda Wadley, at [phone].

CAPTION(S):

Box, Map

Box: (Color) PUBLIC REVIEW (See text)

Map: Site 14 (Port Hueneme)

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