[CPEO-MEF] Housing on closed range in San Diego?

[Lenny Siegel <lsiegel@cpeo.org>]

A Navy proposal to build military family housing at Miramar Marine Corps
Air Station, in the city of San Diego, raises important questions about
the treatment of "closed ranges" - property on active military
installations that may have been, but not longer is, used for ordnance
training or testing. According to a Navy announcement published in late
1999, it was considering four locations at Miramar, ranging from 100 to
283 acres, for the construction of up to 1,600 housing units for
military personnel and their dependents. (I have not yet been able to
determine the status of the environmental review announced in the Navy
notice.)

Miramar is the remaining military section of the former 30,500-acre Camp
Elliott, where more than 250,000 troops performed maneuvers and gunnery
training during World War II and the Korean War. Camp Elliott itself was
closed in 1960, and at least 13,000 acres were transferred to local
government and private developers. The first portions of the Tierrasanta
neighborhood were built on some of that property in the early 1970s, and
Mission Trails Park today covers a large portion of the former Camp.

An 1983 incident in Tierrasanta jump-started the Army Corps' program for
responding to unexploded ordnance at formerly used defense sites. Two
boys were killed and a third injured when they discovered and disturbed
an unexploded 37-mm round in a ravine at the end of a Tierrasanta
cul-de-sac. Since then, the Army Corps has conducted a series of
clearances at former Camp Elliott. Because unexploded ordnance keeps
turning up on land not known to have served as impact areas, new areas
are still being added to its program.

At least one of the proposed Miramar housing sites is reportedly located
on land adjacent to the former defense site where ordnance and explosive
waste have been found, yet there is apparently no clear determination by
the Navy and Marines that this property should even be potentially
handled as a closed range. That is, though there appears to be reason to
suspect the presence of unexploded ordnance on or near the housing site,
the property is not on any ordnance-response workplan and California
state regulators, who oversee the cleanup at the former defense site,
have not been involved.

Based upon the limited information that I have been able to gather thus
far, there appears to be a dangerous gap in the military's ordnance
program. The fact that the property is owned by the Defense Department
should not exempt the proposed housing project from a full review of
potential ordnance-related risks.

Lenny

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Lenny Siegel
Director, Center for Public Environmental Oversight
c/o PSC, 222B View St., Mountain View, CA 94041
Voice: 650/961-8918 or 650/969-1545
Fax: 650/968-1126
lsiegel@cpeo.org
http://www.cpeo.org

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