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thedrifter
03-30-06, 07:43 AM
Water quality board orders Marines to fix landfill problems
By Rick Rogers
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER

March 30, 2006

Late last year, water regulators suggested that Las Pulgas Landfill at Camp Pendleton was leaking high levels of pollutants due to shoddy construction.

LAURA EMBRY / Union-Tribune
Leachate, the liquid that filters through garbage, is being stored in bladders at the Las Pulgas Landfill at Camp Pendleton.
Now the San Diego Regional Water Quality Control Board has ordered the base to fix what one of the board's inspectors calls the worst landfill failure of its kind in county history.

While repair costs for the dump are unknown, taxpayers likely will pay for what appear to be engineering errors that have forced the $3.2 million landfill to close.

“There has never been a cleanup order in this county that has dealt with construction deficiencies like what we've seen at Las Pulgas,” said John Odermatt, a senior engineering geologist for the water board. “I have never seen an engineering-related problem this large at another landfill.”

The most serious troubles have been the failure of a synthetic liner and the release of hundreds of thousands of gallons of contaminated leachate, the liquid that filters through garbage.

The Marines are storing about 280,000 gallons of leachate in large bladders and a metal tank at the dump. Some of that liquid has concentrations of zinc and nickel high enough to qualify it as hazardous waste.

Much of the leachate is also laced with tritium, a radioactive form of hydrogen. Base officials have not pinpointed the origin of the tritium, but have listed road signs and smoke detectors dumped at Las Pulgas as possible sources.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is working with Camp Pendleton on ways to dispose of the tritium, which is also produced by nuclear reactors and atomic detonations.

Camp Pendleton commanders acknowledge that cracks in the exposed slopes of the liner have allowed leaks to occur. But they believe the sides are sound now and hold out hope that the rest of the liner is intact.

A split bottom could force the Marines to remove 40,000 tons of garbage before they can fix the problem. Pending tests will determine if the liner's bottom is ruptured.

“The liner is not a completely defined problem,” said Tracy Sahagun, who works on environmental issues at Camp Pendleton.

Edmund Rogers, facilities manager for the base, said removing the garbage would be a “worst-case scenario.”

The 17-acre landfill opened in 1999, but closed in 2003 after leachate gushed from it during heavy rains.

In a 32-page cleanup and abatement order sent to Camp Pendleton in late January, inspectors for the water board said the landfill's liner “was not properly constructed.”

The report also listed engineering inconsistencies.

The landfill was designed on paper one way but apparently built another way. For example, the builders created a liner system with rocks larger than those specified in the blueprint. These bigger rocks may have caused holes and rips in the liner, the water board said.

Scrupulous attention to engineering details mattered, Odermatt said, because the landfill was built with a relatively thin liner. While this option saved construction dollars, it also made the liner more prone to holes and tears.

“Somewhere between design and construction,” Odermatt said, “things got fouled up.”

The water board's actions against Las Pulgas have prompted other contractors building landfills in the county to propose using thicker liners.

“What happened at Las Pulgas has put other contractors on notice,” Odermatt said.

The Navy, which contracted and supervised construction of Las Pulgas Landfill for the Marine Corps, is investigating what went wrong. It has not decided whether to seek financial damages from the builders, said Lee Saunders of the Naval Facilities Engineering Command Southwest in San Diego.

Camp Pendleton has until Dec. 31 to submit its repair plan to the water board, which has insisted on daily reports and visual images of the repair work.

“The way the order is written,” said Odermatt, “(Camp Pendleton has) to fix the defects, start over or come up with another acceptable alternative. I am telling the Marine Corps they are back to square one on this project.”

Problems at the landfill emerged early during its construction, according to the water board's enforcement records.

In the late 1990s, the Marines wanted to add a 17-acre section to the 39-acre Las Pulgas landfill. On May 24, 1999, contractors finished installing a liner to keep contaminants from seeping into the ground.

The Marine Corps failed to submit an inspection report that summer. Then an incomplete report was submitted in December.

In April 2003, the water board cited Camp Pendleton for not controlling erosion and runoff from the landfill. By year's end, the board's inspectors began suggesting that the Las Pulgas liner was damaged – a contention they have repeated to base officials.

Since February 2005, Camp Pendleton has been cited four times over the leaking landfill.

The landfill isn't the only environmental challenge facing Camp Pendleton. In September, the Marines announced that the base's southern water system was contaminated with higher-than-permitted levels of lead.

Free medical screenings, bottled water and tips for minimizing exposure to lead have been offered to the system's nearly 40,000 customers.

Additionally, the Corps has tested water samples from various sites on base and found no further contamination.

The base is installing a system to coat the water pipes with a phosophate so lead won't leach into the drinking water.

Rick Rogers: (760) 476-8212; rick.rogers@uniontrib.com

Ellie