Input sought on Seabee Base pollution cleanup

I came to the Seabee Base on 17 April, 1968 and I have been exposed to Agent Orange not only on the Seabee Base but also in Vietnam.

There is suppose to be an Agent Orange Registry but I cannot locate my name on the registry.

This is a great article for the many military personnel which served during the Vietnam Era, but I would like to have more information concerning this matter.

 

Projects on, near Seabee Base

By MIKE KELLER
mkeller@sunherald.com

 

GULFPORT --

Officials involved in the widespread and decadeslong pollution cleanup around the Naval Construction Battalion Center asked for public comments on two new environmental restoration projects.

Public input is a legally required step before the projects can begin.

Navy contractors have developed plans to remove two different types of cancer-causing chemicals both on and off the base.

The first project seeks to remove up to 9,000 tons of dioxin-contaminated dredge piles northwest of Canal Road and 28th Street. Contractors want to transport the soil, taken from the adjacent canal in the 1970s as part of a flooding-reduction project, and lock it in concrete on the base like previous efforts undertaken after herbicide Agent Orange leaked from storage drums and polluted the area.

"Average dioxin concentrations (in the piles) definitely put us over the limits of a residential area," said assessment project manager Bob Fisher, an employee with Navy contractor Tetra Tech. "From an engineering standpoint, (cleanup plans) are a simple design. In execution, it will be anything but. There will definitely be a lot of headaches."

But Marie Hansen, a resident who has been active in holding the Navy responsible for cleaning up the Agent Orange leaks, said the government is shirking its duties in protecting the health of community members who may have been unknowingly exposed to the Vietnam-era herbicide.

"I don't like the way all this stuff is being dragged out," Hansen said. "I told them about these piles three or four years ago and they still haven't started cleaning them out."

Hansen also intends to show state environmental-quality officers next week a place north of the base where she said drums of Agent Orange are still buried.

Tetra Tech's Fisher also unveiled plans to remove about 450 cubic yards of PCB-contaminated soil on the base. The project will clear out an 80-foot section of a drainage ditch near the base's parade field. PCB, a chemical formerly used as a fluid coolant in transformers, was found 14 feet below ground during the base-wide dioxin study in 1997.

Fisher expects to excavate around 33 pounds of the cancer-causing organic chemical in the $500,000 cleanup, which should bring the area back to residential standards for pollution.

"Excavation and disposal is the preferred method," Fisher said. "It's protective of human health and the environment. It's cost-effective and it's attainable."

Comments are being accepted until July 12, 2007. Send them in writing by e-mail to gordon.crane@navy.mil or to Gordon Crane at 2401 Upper Nixon Avenue, Gulfport, MS, 39501.