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thedrifter
01-17-07, 07:29 AM
Fixing landfill to cost millions

Base closed dump over seepage fears
By Rick Rogers
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER

January 17, 2007

Camp Pendleton faces a multimillion-dollar bill to fix a dump that threatens water supplies and has been called the greatest engineering failure of its kind in San Diego County history.

The Las Pulgas Landfill, situated near the base's central area, was expanded in 1999 to hold decades' worth of trash. But shoddy construction has turned the dump into a money pit.

Marine officials had to close the site in 2003. It will now cost $5.5 million to $29.4 million to address problems such as the landfill's ruptured liner, according to a new study commissioned by Camp Pendleton and obtained by The San Diego Union-Tribune.

That's on top of the $2.3 million already spent to enlarge the landfill and the $400,000 for emergency measures to trap hundreds of thousands of gallons of hazardous waste – including radioactive material and heavy metals – that have gushed from the site.

Government regulators fear such runoff could foul drinking-water wells and aquifers located just a few miles from the dump.

“Camp Pendleton has a vital interest in operating the landfill safely . . . and that includes the long-term interest of using the water in the Las Pulgas Basin,” said John H. Robertus, executive officer of the San Diego Regional Water Quality Control Board.

Agency and Camp Pendleton officials will meet today to discuss land-use issues on the base. They plan to briefly mention the landfill report, which was compiled by the Pasadena-based consulting firm Tetra Tech Inc. More in-depth meetings about Las Pulgas are expected to follow.

“We share a common interest in the beneficial uses of groundwater in that area,” said Robertus, a retired Marine colonel from Camp Pendleton. “I don't think we are going to have a hard time resolving this.”

Once the water board and Camp Pendleton agree on a landfill fix, Marine officials will hire a contractor to do the work.

Proposed repairs include placing a liner system on top of the existing garbage. This would be the cheapest option, at an estimated $5.5 million to $7.3 million, Tetra Tech said.

“The remedy here appears to be limiting leaching by blocking the infiltration of liquid from the top. That's a fairly standard approach,” said Lenny Siegel, director of the Center for Public Environmental Oversight in Mountain View. “At some point, however, it may fail. That's why it's important that the monitoring plan – barely mentioned (by Tetra Tech) – be robust, and that there be a contingency plan to address major failures.”

The most expensive strategy, pegged at $14 million to $29.4 million, would entail removing the roughly 250,000 cubic yards of garbage already in the landfill and then permanently closing the dump.

“We are concerned with the deficiencies identified (at Las Pulgas) . . . and are eager to find a solution that prevents any potential impacts to the environment,” Camp Pendleton officials said in a recent statement.

During the late 1990s, the Marines decided to add a 17-acre section to the 39-acre landfill and relied on contractors to do the project and monitor the work.

The contractors, whom the Marine Corps hasn't publicly identified, installed a liner in May 1999 to prevent the dump's contaminants from seeping into the ground, according to records from the water board.

The first hint of problems with the liner came when the Marines failed to submit an inspection report that summer. When base officials did turn in a report in December, it was incomplete, the water board said.

Then in April 2003, the agency cited Camp Pendleton for erosion and runoff from the dump. The landfill closed that year after leachate and tritium, a radioactive isotope, gushed from it during heavy rains.

The Marines have stored about 300,000 gallons of leachate in large bladders and a metal tank at the site. Some of the liquid contained levels of zinc and nickel high enough to qualify as hazardous waste.

Over the years, water board officials have cited engineering gaffes that likely caused the landfill's problems. 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.

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

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

Ellie