For more than a decade after World War II, Navy pilots from the El Toro Marine base dropped thousands of bombs and rockets on a large swath of south Orange County.
The target practice ended after the Korean War nearly 50 years ago. But the legacy of those bombing runs continues to haunt the area in the form of unexploded munitions hidden beneath open spaces.
The Trabuco Bombing Range now consists of the housing tracts of the city of Rancho Santa Margarita and the rolling ridges and crevices of O'Neill Regional Park. About 70 tons of bombs and rockets were excavated when the city was built, so few are believed to remain there. However, countless others remain beneath the soil in parts of the sprawling 3,100-acre county park, a popular spot for hiking, mountain biking and picnicking.
Local officials believe the munitions represent a public hazard and are unhappy at the federal government's timetable for cleanup, which would not begin for 21 years.
"Quite frankly, 2023 is really unacceptable," said Rancho Santa Margarita Councilman Gary Thompson. "We're talking about an area utilized by the public. They certainly should put a priority on that."
There is no record of any injuries caused by people coming into contact with the unexploded ordnance in Orange County, though federal authorities have recorded dozens of civilian causalities at other sites with unexploded munitions across the nation, including the death of two San Diego boys in 1983. The bombs used for practice contain only a fraction of the firepower of normal bombs, but the government said they can still cause serious injuries.
"It's like Russian roulette," said Lenny Siegel, director of the Center for Public Environmental Oversight in Washington, D.C. "You know most people won't be hurt."
The 1,812-acre bombing range is one of more than 9,000 so-called "formerly used defense sites" across the United States. About 2,500 need cleanup that will cost about $19 billion. However, federal spending has hovered around $220 million annually, said Candace Walters, a spokeswoman for the Army Corps of Engineers headquarters in Washington. "That doesn't go very far."
If that spending pace remains stagnant, cleaning up all the sites will take nearly a century.
An Oregon congressman has been pushing for years to focus more attention on the issue of unexploded munitions and former defense sites.
