Lawmakers investigate ground contamination at U.S. bases

Posted on : 2007-06-15 18:49 KST Modified on : 2019-10-19 20:29 KST
'Worse than we had imagined,' say environmental groups of pollution

An oil sensor probing the ground beside an underground oil tank sounded its alarm. Dirty oil filled about half of a transparent test tube that was pushed about 4 meters underground. The oil was dabbed with a cotton swab and held up to a flame; it began to burn, giving off black smoke. "You could run a car on this stuff," one of those watching said.

A 31-member investigation team, including 10 lawmakers of the National Assembly's Environment & Labor Committee, examined three U.S. military bases in Paju and Uijeongbu recently returned to South Korea. Contaminated sites on the bases were opened on this day for the first time.

The empty barracks at Camp Edward in Wollong-myeon in Paju looked desolate, with paint peeling off of the walls. Sixteen fuel tanks were signs that the U.S. military had used Camp Edward as a logistics base since 1954.

When digging up the ground, a smell rose like that of a petrochemical plant. Leakage from underground oil tanks had collected in the groundwater. An oil layer at the most contaminated site near the underground tanks had reached 2.4 meters deep last year, but investigators found that the layer had been reduced to 1 meter, the result of a six-month "bioslurping" effort, a technique to remove oil in underground water. However, the base was far from decontaminated. Up to 16 drums of leaked oil were pumped out of the ground, from depths of 46 centimeters.

Seong Su-ho, an official of the Ministry of Environment, said, "Spilled oil permeated through the soil and then flowed out to a depression; our investigation team dug it up two to three days ago."

The base, sized 76,000 pyong (250,800 square meters), was also involved in an oil spill of 148,000 tons in 2002. The amount of soil polluted by oil and zinc in that incident was equivalent to 3,900 loads hauled by a 15-ton truck.

The U.S. military agreed with the South Korean government to remove all of the pollution before returning the bases. However, there is enough evidence to show the U.S. military has not kept its promise. For example, over 40 broken air conditioners were piled up in a storehouse of Camp Kyle in Uijeongbu, and it was discovered that 51 out of 66 oil tanks at Camp Howze in Paju had not been completely emptied.

Professor Lee Jin-yong at Kangwon National University said, "If the facilities had belonged to the U.S., they wouldn't have managed them so poorly."

Seo Jae-cheol of Green Korea United said, "The situation is far more serious than I had thought. We should investigate the realities of groundwater pollution [at these bases]."

The Korean government's reluctance to release information on the matter is another core problem. Rep. Woo Won-shik of the National Assembly's Environment & Labor Committee urged the government to change its attitude, saying, "Because the government hasn't opened data which we requested - saying to do so would be 'a security problem' - the Assembly hearings on the issue have not progressed smoothly."

Please direct questions or comments to [englishhani@hani.co.kr]

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