Eleven federal facilities in California--10 military bases and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory--are among 52 government installations that should be included on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Superfund list of the nation's most potentially hazardous waste sites, the agency said Thursday.
Because they are at government facilities operated by federal agencies, the cleanups mandated by Superfund legislation would have to be paid for by the agencies themselves, the EPA said.
The EPA made no estimate of costs, but Jon Cannon, the assistant EPA administrator in charge of the Superfund, said in Washington that "you will see (budget) demands ballooning in future years as remedies are selected and the cleanup process--the expensive part of the process--kicks in."
The 11 facilities in California include the Camp Pendleton Marine Corps Base in San Diego County; the Marine Corps Logistics Base near Barstow; Edwards Air Force Base in southern Kern County; the Ft. Ord Army Base near Monterey; George Air Force Base near Victorville and the Lawrence laboratory in Livermore.
The others are March Air Force Base in Riverside; Mather Air Force Base near Sacramento; the Treasure Island Naval Station's Hunters Point Annex in San Francisco; the Tracy Defense Depot in Tracy and Travis Air Force Base in Solano County.
Facilities in other states include the Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York; the Feed Materials Production Center in Ohio; the Oak Ridge Reservation in Tennessee; the Picatinny Army Arsenal in New Jersey and the Savannah River nuclear military plant in South Carolina.
With these new proposed sites, the Superfund National Priorities List now includes 1,224 hazardous waste sites, 889 of which are final and 335 of which are proposed. In California, 52 sites are on the final list and 46 now are proposed.
Once a site is proposed, its inclusion on the list is open for public comment, usually for about 60 days. The proposal is then reviewed and, if accepted, it is placed on the final list.
After a site makes the final list, there is a period of study and negotiation, which can last up to two years, to determine the best course of action. Federal law requires that the actual cleanup work begin no more than 15 months after the cleanup plan is selected.
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