Agent Orange Dump Site Is Oregon Desert’s Toxic Legacy
May 3, 2012 | OPB
A deal cut by the state with the foreign company that owns the
site has now been dropped. And the Department of Environmental Quality has no
plans – or money – to clean it up.
About 60 miles north of Lakeview a barbed wire fence surrounds a
patch of desert. Warning signs tell people to stay away.
Boyd Levet remembers watching in 1976 as the dump was created.
“It was probably just acres but it seemed like miles and miles
of barrels just lined up in rows. It was a sight you would not expect to see in
a place as beautiful as Oregon,” says Levet, who was a reporter back then for
KOIN-TV.
25,513 barrels containing more than 1 million gallons of
pesticide had been stacked next to Alkali Lake. They promptly started leaking.
Levet’s old news film shows the state of
Oregon sent in bulldozers. They didn’t just bury the drums. They crushed them,
allowing more toxics to pour out.
The chemicals include 2,4,5-T and 2,4-D – the
prime ingredients of Agent Orange –
notorious for its use during the Vietnam War.
Oregon’s Department of Environmental Quality pushed the
25-thousand crushed barrels in trenches, then shoved dirt on top.
The trenches were not lined.
The dioxin-laced pesticides quickly reached the water table
below, just 3- to 6-feet down.
Contaminated groundwater samples
“The groundwater near the landfill is very contaminated,” says
Bob Schwarz, DEQ’s current project manager over the Alkali Lake Disposal Site.
He adds:
“The chemicals caused the water to be a bright red color. Pretty
striking to see.”
The state has put up a fence around it. Tests have measured
contaminated ground water spreading nearly half a mile underground. The nearest
families live 3 miles away. And the town of Christmas Valley is about 30 miles
to the west.
“I would say if it was near any population center, even a town
as small as Christmas Valley it could very well have been declared a Superfund
site,” Schwarz says.
Former Lake County Commissioner J.R. Stewart is angry that the
state does not intend to clean up the chemical dumpsite.
“If it’s not affecting you it’s not a problem. Well, it’s
affecting Lake County,” he says. “It’s affecting the state of Oregon and it has
the potential, in time, to be a great effect and a danger. Why not remedy a
very bad situation as soon as possible, rather than turn a blind eye until you
absolutely get beat over the head and have to do it?”
Stewart has been to the site several times. He says he can still
smell the chemicals there. DEQ says those chemicals dissipate in the wind so
they are no hazard as long as people stay away.
A study for the EPA last
year found contaminated water reaching the surface in an area known as habitat
for the threatened western snowy plover. No studies have been done on whether
they have been affected.
The company that originally made the Agent Orange has been sold
several times since. The current owner is Bayer CropScience. In a written
statement, a company spokesman says that Bayer CropScience thought it had
reached “a fair and appropriate resolution” with DEQ in 2009.
The settlement did not address cleanup or future testing. Bayer
would have paid 700-thousand dollars towards the 2-million dollars taxpayers
have already spent fencing, burying and keeping tabs on the site. And if anyone
else sued, Bayer would have paid 20% while taxpayers would cover 80 percent of
litigation costs.
Lake County residents and officials filed objections, saying the
proposed settlement let the company off the hook.
“The chemical companies you’re talking about are multi-billion
dollar corporations. Come on,” Stewart says. “Let’s fight for what we know is
right and get it done.”
Late last year, without any public announcement, DEQ quietly
dropped the settlement. It has made no decision about pursuing the company. It
has no plans to clean up the site, which could cost hundreds of millions of
dollars.
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