Here's another troubling story about the Army Corps of Engineers. It starts at Schilling Air Force Base in Salina, KS, but may have implications well beyond.

As we've reported previously, a large plume of TCE contamination, suspected to be emanating from Schilling AFB, is currently migrating under residential neighborhoods in Salina and is headed towards city water supply wells. The Army Corps of Engineers is involved in the remediation investigation but their participation has faced great scrutiny.

Now, according to the Salina Journal, it appears the corps has been intentionally avoiding investigation/clean-up of an obvious potential source of TCE. Reacting to corps' claims that the alleged source-property was "never under [DOD] ownership or control," Salina officials were stunned.

“It was clear the corps intended to claim that the TCE contamination that was under the residential area was not their TCE, and so they had no responsibility to clean it up,” says Ilene Gaekwad, an environmental attorney who represents the city of Salina, the Salina Airport Authority, the Salina School District and Kansas State University at Salina. “What was so appalling about it was there was a liquid oxygen plant right near the location they were calling the source. We knew — and the military knows — LOX plants used enormous quantities of TCE.”

The Journal describes a suspicious history involving the corps and its repeated failure to investigate the LOX plant, despite having identified the plant as a suspected TCE source over 5 years ago.

But maybe we should cut the corp some slack. After all, how are they to know that some random LOX plant might be a TCE contamination source? Well...

Earlier this month, Salina City Manager Jason Gage sent Col. Michael Rossi, commander of the corps’ Kansas City district, an eight-page letter detailing the city’s frustration with the investigation. He spent two pages on the LOX plant issue.

“LOX plants are known by the Department of Defense to be heavy users of TCE, and have been found to be the source of TCE contamination at numerous current and former Air Force installations throughout the country (eg. Castle AFB, Pease AFB, Fairchild AFB, Warren AFB, Larson AFB),” Gage wrote. “As early as 1999 the corps recognized this former LOX plant at the former Schilling Air Force Base as a potential source of groundwater contamination. Despite this knowledge, in studies from 1999-2005 the corps never investigated the LOX plant as a TCE source for the northern plume.”

The story points out that city officials aren't the only ones concerned about the corps' performance. A Michigan-based contractor hired by the city has claimed that the corps "seriously miscalculated how long the plume will take to reach city wells" (the contractor revised the original corps estimate of 175 years down to 8) and has suggested that the corps lacks a fundamental understanding of geology and hydrology in the area. Further, EPA has criticized the corps' Salina data as incomplete, sometimes contradictory, and lacking transparency. EPA also accused the corps of failing to follow EPA rules for calculating risk, using questionable statistical methods, and improperly using TCE toxicity values.

We learn from the Journal that the concerns/lapses in Salina may not be unique:

Kay Havenor is a geologist in Roswell, N.M. He is co-chairman of the Restoration Advisory Board established there in connection with the corps’ cleanup of the former Walker Air Force Base. A RAB, as they are often called, acts as liaison between the corps and the community. Here in Salina, the RAB for the Schilling cleanup was formed in 2003.

Havenor says that today the relationship between the corps and the community is excellent, but it wasn’t always so.

“(Project management) was under the corps’ Tulsa office, and Tulsa just didn’t give a hoot what happened out here,” Havenor said. “They really didn’t. They were arrogant, and whenever they showed up for meetings they had more lawyers than we had attendees in the audience.”

Havenor said the corps seemed to have particular difficulty finding any contamination.

“If I had to guess, I would say they tried to pick the places where they wouldn’t find any, because they did a pretty good job of it,” he said.

For the entire story, see here.

Meantime, we can't help but wonder: Is the Army Corp of Engineers protecting military polluters? Given the lengths the DOD/military has gone to avoid protecting the public from TCE, this wouldn't surprise us a bit.