A federal investigative body determined cleanup of contamination at McGuire Air Force Base has made little progress in the decade the military base has been on the Superfund List. In a report released today, the Government Accountability Office said the lack of an agreement between the federal Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Defense hampered cleanup and had...
Soldiers line up to board an aircraft at McGuire Air Force Base in Wrightstown, in this 2008 file photo.A federal investigative body determined cleanup of contamination at McGuire Air Force Base has made little progress in the decade the military base has been on the Superfund List.
In a report released today, the Government Accountability Office said the lack of an agreement between the federal Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Defense hampered cleanup and had the potential for cutting corners and exposing the public to health risks.
The investigation by the GAO, requested by U.S. Sens. Frank Lautenberg and Robert Menendez, grew out of an order three years ago by the EPA for the Department of Defense to clean up contamination of hazardous materials at McGuire and other military bases after years of failed negotiations on remediation.
The Department of Defense and the EPA reached an agreement regarding McGuire the end of last year, a decade after parts of the base were designated a Superfund site and more than two decades after contamination was first reported there.
A lack of such an agreement contributed to cleanup delays, the report said, because the EPA did not have the ability to ensure the remedial work was done properly and expeditiously and with public input.
The EPA said today it welcomed the review.
‘‘Superfund sites can endanger the health of nearby residents and communities, in the case of these installations, potentially putting families of military personnel living on-base at risk,’’ the agency said in a prepared statement. ‘‘EPA supports the GAO’s recommendations that EPA be granted independent authority to ensure that the agency can take appropriate enforcement actions against federal agencies consistent with the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act."
McGuire, which covers more than 3,500 acres in the Pinelands in New Hanover and Wrightstown, opened in 1937 as a facility for the U.S. Army. Contaminants there include PCBs, pesticides, volatile compounds and metals. Petroleum and jet fuel were found in the soil, sediment, surface water and groundwater.
The report recommends the Department of Defense and the EPA develop a uniform method of reporting cleanup progress, develop a system for the Department of Defense to report new releases of hazardous materials to the EPA and review whether performance-based contracts are appropriate for the cleanup work.
It also suggested the EPA keep detailed records on Department of Defense Superfund sites and use monitored natural attenuation — remediation by biological processes — when the project calls for protecting public health and the environment.
The report additionally recommended giving the EPA the authority to issue executive orders to military installations in need of cleanup that have not yet reached signed an intergovernmental agreement.
‘‘We have an obligation to protect the health and safety of our military men and women whether they are fighting overseas or stationed here at home," said Lautenberg, an Army veteran and Chairman of the Environment and Public Works Subcommittee on Superfund, Toxics and Environmental Health.
Cdr. Wendy Snyder, a Pentagon spokeswoman, said today the Department of Defense endorsed four of the six recommendations and has made progress with performance-based contracts that were criticized in the report as having the potential for contractors to cut corners in order to meet specific deadlines.
‘‘We now know how to write the contracts and how to work with EPA. In addition, our cleanup program is more mature — we know more about the sites — so we can write better descriptions of the end performance desired, thus greatly reducing the unknowns mentioned in the GAO report,’’ Snyder said.
Menendez said public and Congressional attention forced the Department of Defense to finally enter an agreement with the EPA. He said he will continue to monitor the cleanup progress at McGuire.