- 5 months ago
Joe Rosenbloom looks into the Defense Department's poor record of cleaning up the ground water pollution it has caused.
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00:01Funding for Frontline is provided by this station and other public television stations nationwide
00:07and by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
00:13Tonight on Frontline, one of the biggest toxic waste polluters in America, the U.S. military.
00:19Unless they are caught red-handed, they have a sense of deniability that it's really not their problem
00:25or the problem doesn't exist in the severity that we claim it is.
00:29For decades, the Defense Department has dumped deadly chemicals into the ground
00:33and people across America say they are the victims.
00:36We have 23 cases of cancer and I feel it's like a nightmare.
00:42Tonight, Poison and the Pentagon.
00:53From the network of public television stations, a presentation of KCTS Seattle.
00:59WMET, New York.
01:01WPBT, Miami.
01:03WTVS, Detroit.
01:05And WGBH, Boston.
01:08This is Frontline.
01:10With Judy Woodruff.
01:15Good evening.
01:16Tonight, a report about the largest producer of toxic waste in America, the U.S. military.
01:23The Pentagon generates more toxic waste than the five largest American chemical companies combined.
01:30In the past 10 years, much of that waste has seeped into ground water supplies near military installations across the country.
01:39That contaminated water could threaten the health of millions of Americans and the government will have to spend billions of dollars to clean it up.
01:48But increasingly, there are charges that the Pentagon is doing a poor job of handling its toxic waste.
01:55Charges that the military is delaying clean-ups and sometimes denying any responsibility for the contamination.
02:03Tonight's Frontline investigation examines three military toxic waste cases in detail.
02:10At an Army ammunition plant in Tennessee, a Navy air base in Florida, and an Air Force missile plant in Arizona.
02:20Our program was produced by Michael Kirk.
02:23It is called Poison and the Pentagon.
02:27It was reported by Michael Kirk and Joe Rosenblum.
02:30This country lane in Jacksonville, Florida, is the site of one of the nation's worst toxic waste dumps.
02:41The homes here have been evacuated.
02:44This used to be a seven-acre swamp.
02:49Until in the mid-1960s, it was filled with garbage, including waste materials from two local naval bases.
02:56And the whole area was covered with topsoil.
02:58In 1969, after the dump was filled in, a young couple began building their dream house here on Hips Road.
03:05Yvonne and Don Woodman built their house with their own hands, raised their children here,
03:10and over the next 17 years became part of a small neighborhood.
03:15My husband and I were both raised in small towns, and that was the first thing that struck us as nice because it was small town.
03:24Neighbors were extremely friendly.
03:26They were dependable.
03:27They cared about one another.
03:29They still do.
03:30City water was not available at Hips Road, so the neighbors drilled their own wells.
03:36They had lived there only a few years before noticing problems with their water.
03:43My wife and I, she noticed it first.
03:45She said, you know, it's a different taste than the water.
03:48And I said, I can smell it, but I really can't taste it because we'd always have cold water, you know,
03:52and I couldn't taste it that well, but I could smell it, especially when I'd take a shower.
03:56And when you'd take a shower in that house, it'd smell up the whole house.
04:00What did it taste like, Carolyn? Do you remember?
04:02It was almost like a metallic, almost a gasoline oil base, something like that.
04:13It had a real weird taste to it.
04:15You'd wash your clothes the very best you knew how, and they got dingier every wash.
04:22And I tried everything, you know, bleach and all the old home remedies and everything,
04:26and it got worse and worse and worse.
04:30Residents notified the state authorities, and the water was tested in 1983.
04:36Contaminated water notices were posted on their front doors.
04:40Their wells were closed, and for six months bottled water was brought in.
04:44Tests showed their wells had 20 hazardous chemicals, seven of them cancer-causing.
04:51Once their worst fears were confirmed, the neighbors began to look for someone to blame.
04:57Because local people remembered the Navy's involvement in the Hips Road landfill,
05:01they appealed to a powerful local congressman, Charles Bennett.
05:06Bennett asked the Navy about Hips Road.
05:09In this reply to Bennett, the Navy, five months after the water was shut off at Hips Road, said, quote,
05:15The Navy did not dump at the Hips Road site, nor did we contract for disposal of materials that caused contamination at the site.
05:23Yvonne Woodman and her neighbors were stunned, because this contradicted clear evidence of the Navy in their own backyards.
05:31Tools, tools brand new, never been used, still in the case, throw them away.
05:38Leaking cans of solvent, paint thinners and that sort of thing, different types of cleaners,
05:43either half opened or not opened, some crushed, some with just, you know, no more than a screwdriver hole in them.
05:48And some of them you'd pull out and they'd still be dripping.
05:51I mean, it wasn't, it's not anything that you can, anybody today can go out with a shovel and just unearth just as much of the stuff you want to haul away.
06:00Over the years, everything has surfaced.
06:05This has not been touched. This is an aircraft tire.
06:08And all of this stuff is surfacing as the sand is blown or the erosion takes place or whatever.
06:14All the materials are surfacing to the top. It's very easy to find, find stuff out here.
06:19Here is part of a fuselage right here, wing of an aircraft right there.
06:24There's a can of 1-1-1 trichloroethane.
06:31This is microfilm that Mr. Vort found as he was laying the foundation to his house.
06:37And we enlarged one of the legible ones, which shows an aircraft.
06:44Arlington residents took a fight to City Hall tonight.
06:47Hips Road residents took their fight to Washington.
06:50The Navy's denials and the discovery of leftover Navy material in her backyard
06:55caused Yvonne Woodman, high school graduate and housewife, to become a self-taught environmentalist and organizer,
07:02testifying before congressional committees and trying to get Hips Road cleaned up.
07:07I was raised to respect the American government and I love America.
07:14I'm proud to be an American citizen.
07:17My husband was in the Navy. My son is now in the Navy.
07:22I've never been a radical. I've never gone out and laid in front of a bulldozer.
07:27I've never done any of that stuff.
07:29Woodman's faith in the Navy has been shaken by her experience.
07:34After five years, the Navy still maintains that none of its toxic waste ever went to Hips Road.
07:40We have a pop of 4-9 or 5. Can you leave room to allow another aircraft to get by at the end, sir?
07:48The Jacksonville Naval Air Station is one of the Navy's largest bases for maintaining and overhauling aircraft.
07:55Since World War II, this installation has routinely used large quantities of toxic chemicals.
08:10Chemicals to dissolve the grease off engine parts. Chemicals to strip paint. Chemicals for various purposes, like methylene chloride, trichloroethane and ethyl benzene.
08:20Scientists say, in very small quantities, the toxins may not be that dangerous.
08:27But apparently, over the years, thousands of gallons were just taken off the base and haphazardly buried.
08:33The Naval Air Station Jacksonville is a big industrial station. They probably use every chemical known to man in some way or another.
08:42Yeah.
08:43And routinely, they would dump it into the ground.
08:46The story of how the Navy handled its toxic waste begins in the mid-1960s. It is told by retired base employees.
08:56My job was to dig a great big ditch 20 foot deep and 24 foot wide and burn this garbage on top of the ground.
09:06The trucks would dump it right up on top of the ground.
09:08I would burn it, run over it with a bulldozer, mash it down as flat as I could get it, then push it into that hole and cover it up with a couple of feet of earth.
09:18All right.
09:19For 20 years, Roy Durham buried toxic waste for the Navy at the Jacksonville base itself.
09:26His friend John Austin is also retired from the Navy.
09:29At a later date, they were fast running out of dump space, so they contracted with a private contractor to remove it from the base.
09:37For years, little attention was paid to what happened to these chemicals and whether they made their way into dumpsters like these.
09:47In 1966, the Navy contracted with a company then called Waste Control of Florida to remove the dumpsters.
09:55The Navy says policing the dumpsters wasn't its responsibility. It says that was the job of men like Charlie Evans.
10:03Twenty years ago, Evans was a waste control driver at the Navy base.
10:11Go ahead.
10:12Do you ever look inside these things to see what's in there?
10:15No, you really don't have time. You know, you really don't have time.
10:19And it's something that most of us drivers are not even interested in doing.
10:26The only thing I can remember at the base in particular was those long plastic tubing pipes.
10:32I don't know what they were or what. What they was for.
10:35If it's smoking, then I feel like it's some kind of acid.
10:38But it's hard to tell dust from smoke in each truck because you run up with a lot of them.
10:45Starting in 1966, the waste was trucked from the base to local landfills.
10:51The chief lawyer for the Chicago corporation that acquired waste control is Jim Hines.
10:58This was the normal way at that time to do it.
11:01You would contract with either the city to use it as a landfill or with a private company to use it as a landfill.
11:08And after about a year or however long it would take to fill it and level it off, then the homeowners would now have leveled ground in the back instead of a swamp full of mosquitoes.
11:19Twenty years later, the garbage company now regrets that practice.
11:22The Navy, however, has never publicly admitted its waste is at Hips Road.
11:28But the Navy's former civilian supervisor of waste disposal at the Jacksonville base told producer Michael Kirk that it was possible toxins got in the dumpsters.
11:38Henry Foster out of ground space.
11:41I don't think anybody would deliberately throw that sort of hazard and material into a dumpster.
11:49But again, we did not police the dumpsters.
11:54We just emptied them.
11:55You actually remember times though when there were 55-gallon drums in there and other things that were not just leftover waste stuff from an office?
12:06Well, it has happened.
12:08I couldn't remember specific instances, but that was common practice that anything you didn't want, thrown in a trash container.
12:18So it's not only conceivable, it's probable that a lot of stuff got into those dumpsters that wasn't supposed to be there.
12:25Liquid stuff, solvents, strippers, paint thinners, degreasers, everything else.
12:30It's conceivable, yes.
12:31But in its contract with the garbage company, the Navy promised not to throw any hazardous material in the dumpsters.
12:39The garbage company's lawyer, Jim Hines.
12:42Well, I think that Waste Control of Florida, again, a small local hauler at the time, was contracting to take out garbage.
12:51And if there's anything that was non-garbage, non-conforming to the contract, then, you know, the Navy should have had better control.
12:58Once it went through the gates, it became somebody else's responsibility.
13:05We made sure that they didn't dump it on the station site.
13:11They didn't spill it on the station site.
13:13Dumped on schedule.
13:17Where they went with it was not our responsibility.
13:24But in 1985, the Environmental Protection Agency refused to let the Navy and the company avoid responsibility by blaming each other.
13:34The EPA determined that both the Navy and the company were responsible and might have to pay millions of dollars to clean up Hips Road.
13:47In an extraordinary action, six Hips Road families were then evacuated and relocated.
13:54Well, this is the old homestead.
14:00To say what it's done to the neighborhood, I think it's obvious.
14:04It looks like a ghost town now.
14:06It has totally devastated us emotionally, physically, and economically.
14:12The house has been vandalized in the past two to three weeks since it became public that all of the people were moved out.
14:19And that hurts.
14:22We left it spotless when we moved out in December.
14:42It's not just the kitchen.
14:43It's the whole house.
14:44They've got the cabinets.
14:46They've got the carpeting.
14:47I even had drapes.
14:48I left drapes up.
14:49They've just demolished it.
14:54It hurts.
14:55It hurts bad.
14:56Worse even, the Hips Road neighbors believe their health has been seriously damaged.
15:05They complain about a spectrum of illnesses from headaches to cancer and deaths.
15:11Woodman herself says she suffers from an immunity disorder called lupus and rheumatoid arthritis.
15:19Those illnesses and the other alleged effects of the Navy's toxic waste are the subject of a lawsuit filed by Woodman and 150 others.
15:28Again, through the entire five years, the Navy has refused to even talk to the people of Hips Road.
15:34That's the idiocracy of this whole thing is people out there are saying they're experiencing it.
15:39They're living these nightmares.
15:40And these people that have been exposed to chemicals are saying this is happening to us.
15:45And they're not listening.
15:47That, I think, is the ultimate insult to people.
15:57Perhaps the only time the neighbors will hear from the Navy will be in court.
16:02The Navy also declined Frontline's repeated requests for an interview.
16:07But we did find the Navy's Chief Environmental Officer, Commander Richard Rice, at an open Congressional hearing.
16:14Frontline's Joe Rosenblum asked why the Navy wouldn't speak publicly.
16:18Whose decision was it that you wouldn't cooperate on an interview, do you know?
16:22I don't have a response for that.
16:24Is that your decision?
16:25I don't have a response for that.
16:27I mean, it's not there.
16:29The military has seldom had to respond to questions about its environmental actions.
16:34And although the Pentagon itself has projected that it will cost at least 15 billion dollars to clean up military toxic waste,
16:41they have yet to account publicly for how and where the money will be spent.
16:46Congress occasionally holds hearings.
16:53But it was only in the last year that the Pentagon had to give up responsibility for monitoring its own clean up
16:59and come under the scrutiny of the agency in the federal government that is supposed to protect people like Yvonne Woodman.
17:07The EPA is charged with ensuring that the military now lives up to the nation's environmental laws.
17:13And the head of hazardous waste enforcement here is Gene Lucero.
17:18The military actually, when you compare them with other federal agencies and you compare them with some private industry, has been pretty responsible.
17:28So let's give them a grade. Let's give them an academic grade, A, B, C, D.
17:32Where were they when they started? And where are they now?
17:34Five years ago, I think the military probably started out in the D or F area.
17:41And that's pretty subjective and I don't think anybody tried to measure it.
17:45I think if you had to give them a grade, they've moved up into the high C, low B area.
17:52If you wanted to look at everybody all together, there are a couple of instances where they've done some decent work.
17:57The single instance might warrant an A.
18:00They've done a decent job, they've talked to the community, they have estates pretty happy.
18:03Where?
18:06I'd have to say it's probably some of the smaller facilities.
18:13Where?
18:18I would have to say, my sense, and probably, well, it's hard because I don't know all of the facilities.
18:30I'd have to say I think they've done a decent job at Pensacola and perhaps at a couple other Navy bases.
18:36At the same time...
18:37So far, the Pentagon has located 3,700 toxic sites on military bases.
18:43After more than 12 years, it says 207 are cleaned up.
18:49Congress's bipartisan General Accounting Office says only 99 are.
18:54But the EPA has yet to certify any as complete.
19:00The military insists there have been successful cleanups.
19:07They say one of their notable success stories is in West Tennessee.
19:14The Milan Army Arsenal, 80 miles from Memphis.
19:21Since World War II, millions of tons of ammunition have been assembled here.
19:28The process of making ammunition uses explosives like TNT and RDX.
19:34At this point, we've pressed a portion of 30.5 grams of Comp A5 explosion in each grenade box.
19:45And at least one of the byproducts of this process, dinitrotoluene, or DNT, causes cancer in animals, according to the EPA.
19:56This is some of the plant's toxic waste.
20:05For 40 years, it flowed into 11 man-made lagoons the size of a football field.
20:11The lagoons became a poisonous swamp.
20:15For decades, no one paid attention to them.
20:18But then, in 1978, Army investigators found that the toxins in this water had seeped into the underground aquifer,
20:26or porous rock that supplies the plant's drinking water.
20:30For decades, the people who lived here in base housing and thousands of workers had been drinking polluted water.
20:38The Arsenal's environmental officer, Pat Brew.
20:41That was a shock, definitely. That was an understatement.
20:44It was a very shock to the installation.
20:47We took immediate action to protect our people.
20:50Drinking water wells were immediately shut down.
20:54The base commander was notified.
20:56On my part, there was a concern that we had a problem.
21:01We didn't know where it was coming from at that time.
21:04We weren't really sure what the extent of the problem was.
21:08Jim Nipp was commander at the Arsenal for two years.
21:11During his second year, the pollution was discovered.
21:14He remembers the Army brass's initial reaction.
21:17Shortly after it occurred, they were concerned about the publicity.
21:21It was decided that we would have a press release, and it was...
21:25a lot of last-minute script changing to be sure it was just exactly what it should be,
21:35and it was blessed at all levels of the Army, up to the Department of the Army levels in Washington.
21:40We had...
21:42I had a full colonel down here from Washington to be present during this.
21:46It's sort of in the background.
21:48I had...
21:49Even the day of the press release, I had to get approvals.
21:52I had the script, and they were checking to be sure the script was exactly right.
21:56This is the Army's 1979 press release about the contamination.
22:01It contains no clear warning to the thousands of workers and residents the Army knew must have been drinking a cancer-causing chemical for years.
22:16Myland, Tennessee, where many of those workers live, is just two miles from the arsenal.
22:23This small city of 8,000 depends on the arsenal for jobs.
22:30There is a sense of calm here about the contamination.
22:36Many citizens trust the Army to tell them the truth.
22:41Local newspaper editor, Bob Parkins.
22:44I think you have to have faith in the United States government.
22:47And I'm satisfied with what they're doing and what they're trying to do.
22:51And I don't believe we'll ever have that problem in Myland.
22:55The Whitney Army announced the contamination.
22:58The Myland-Mirror Exchange had other stories to cover.
23:01Major soil-saving effort.
23:03County jail problem.
23:05We've built a new jail.
23:07We just opened this way.
23:10And a local beauty, Miss Myland, pageant, occupied.
23:18And where did Parkins put the story about the poisoning of the arsenal's water supply?
23:25Right there.
23:28Page 13.
23:29And this is the story.
23:31It is word for word, the Army press release.
23:37Soon afterwards, Colonel Nipp left Myland for his next assignment near Washington, D.C.
23:42Then, one year later, he retired and moved back to Myland to live.
23:47I had found out when I was away from Washington,
23:50and talking to the people who had been involved in the initial stages of defining the problem,
23:56that nothing seemed to be happening.
23:58They didn't seem to be concerned.
24:01Well, well, there's not much happening at Myland was the approach.
24:04And I thought, well, gee, there should be.
24:05I came down here and I see the open ponds still sitting there.
24:09Now, we knew at that time, first thing you'd do in a problem of this sort
24:13is stop the water from running into the pond
24:15because it was creating hydrostatic pressure to force the chemicals down into the aquifer.
24:20The pond stayed there.
24:21They were quite visible.
24:23And no action was taken to cap them.
24:25Surprised?
24:26Yes.
24:27I was surprised.
24:28And at that point, I thought, well, look, people ought to be aware of it.
24:32And probably and hopefully a public pressure would make them do something.
24:37In June of 1983, nearly three years after the discovery,
24:41Nipp wrote a letter to the editor of the local newspaper.
24:44It insisted, quote,
24:45the army stopped fumbling with this time bomb
24:48and blocked the flow of poison into the water table.
24:51The next day, Nipp's disclosures were front page news across Tennessee.
24:55This is where the polluted lagoons used to be.
25:00And this is a drawing of what the pollution looked like.
25:04It seeped into the underground water supply.
25:07After Nipp blew the whistle, the army finally decided to clean this up.
25:11They followed the three-year-old recommendations of their engineers
25:15and employed the cheapest solution.
25:17They drained the lagoons.
25:19They filled them with 15 feet of clay, gravel, topsoil, and grass,
25:24a solution known as a cap.
25:27The arsenal's environmental director.
25:29You really only had two options.
25:31You encapsulate your contaminants like this to protect it,
25:35and it is here, not going anywhere.
25:37Or you had an option to dig it up and then take it somewhere else
25:41and bury it or treat it.
25:43This, in this case, was the most economic and the best approach at this point in time.
25:48Some independent engineers and environmental experts say the army's solution is only a half measure.
25:55They argue the army's cap does nothing about the pollution still underground.
26:00All they did was stop the motion.
26:02I believe they took the best actions that we know how to do today
26:07to keep the problem from continuing to migrate to the aquifer.
26:11But the toxins still exist somewhere, and they need to be taken out.
26:16Doing that would cost millions more.
26:19The contaminated soil would have to be dug up and incinerated,
26:23and the polluted water pumped up, cleaned, and pumped back into the ground.
26:28The army says that's not necessary, even though it now faces another setback.
26:33Despite the cap, in the summer of 1987,
26:37the EPA placed the Mylan Arsenal high on the Superfund list
26:41as one of America's most hazardous waste dumps.
26:46The army's response has been a campaign, both locally and in Washington,
26:50to change the EPA's determination.
26:53The current base commander says he wants off the list.
26:57Why is it so important to get off the list to you, Colonel?
27:00Well, because it's bad publicity. It's as simple as that.
27:03Every time this list, from year to year surfaces,
27:06you know, the news media comes out, and it's bad publicity for the plant.
27:11Bad PR, yeah, I don't like bad PR, but if you've got a problem,
27:14then the way to get good PR is to correct the problem.
27:18Think of what good press he'd get
27:21if the army were really actively cleaning up this problem.
27:28No one is certain how much toxic waste is under the base,
27:32or whether it will move toward the city of Mylan
27:35and private wells in the area.
27:38But both the army and its critics agree that if the toxins do migrate,
27:43they could pose a health hazard that would expose the military to massive lawsuits.
27:48And that's exactly what has happened here.
28:01Tucson, Arizona.
28:03The 600,000 residents of this desert city rely entirely on underground supplies for their drinking water.
28:10This neighborhood is known as the South Side.
28:17More than 1,000 of its residents are in court.
28:21They say their water has been poisoned.
28:24The source, they say, lies about two miles from the South Side neighborhood.
28:29They contend a cancer-causing chemical from this Air Force plant has polluted their water.
28:37The plant is operated under government contract by the Hughes Aircraft Company.
28:42The story behind the case is a complicated one.
28:45It goes back to the mid-50s when toxic waste from the plant was pumped into the desert.
28:51The South Side residents say it seeped underground, entered the aquifer, and flowed into their wells.
28:59People who grew up in the neighborhood drank that water for much of their lives.
29:03Melinda Gonzalez went to high school here in the mid-1960s, and so did her future husband, Rick.
29:10Melinda now teaches school in the neighborhood.
29:13And Rick is a lawyer.
29:15About 10 years ago, they became concerned for their friends.
29:19It seems like a lot of times you would hear a story, someone would say,
29:22Oh, did you know that so-and-so now has a brain tumor?
29:26Did you know that someone died of leukemia?
29:28And the list became endless, and it came to the point that we started keeping a list because there were so many people.
29:37They were people in our age group which really concerned me.
29:40It got to the point where my wife and I concluded that there had to be something unusual about this neighborhood since it was always our friends.
29:49It wasn't until the wells were closed in 1981.
29:52And when I read, I'll never forget getting the paper that morning and seeing it in the headlines and thinking,
29:58This has to be it. This has to have some connection to what we've been seeing, what's been going on in the community.
30:04So Rick filed a lawsuit on behalf of their friends and hundreds of other residents.
30:10Hughes, and later the Air Force, were named.
30:12This community's drinking water wells had levels of trichloroethylene, TCE, as high as 200 parts per billion.
30:22The Arizona standard is five parts per billion in drinking water.
30:27In 1985, the EPA identified TCE as a probable cause of human cancer.
30:33Studies are continuing, but while scientists debate TCE's toxic effects, many in this neighborhood have already made up their minds.
30:42I was starting to notice some changes. I would walk down the hallway and I'd bump my head on the walls.
30:50My balance is just really bad. People would tell me, what's wrong with your voice? You know, you're talking funny.
30:58But I didn't notice any difference.
31:01Barbara Valenzuela grew up in the neighborhood.
31:04She went to Sunnyside High in the late 60s and early 70s.
31:09Well, when he told me, it was like a shock. You know, this isn't happening to me. A tumor. What are you talking about?
31:17Valenzuela has had three non-cancerous brain tumors removed.
31:21She is partially paralyzed and deaf.
31:23I think what I miss the most is not being able to hear my kids talk.
31:29No doctor can directly link water pollution to Valenzuela's problems.
31:34But she makes sure her family only drinks purified water.
31:38And she still worries about them.
31:39I would hate for them to be sick, for anything like this to happen to them.
31:46And still, when they complain of a headache or an earache or anything like that, I'll rush them to the doctor.
31:53It scares me.
31:54And Barbara Valenzuela isn't alone in her fears.
32:00Some who live on this street say they have every reason to be afraid.
32:05We have 23 cases of cancer.
32:09And I feel it's like a nightmare.
32:12On this house, a friend of mine died with cancer.
32:15And there's skin cancer on this house.
32:24I have cancer, thyroid cancer.
32:27And my mother has breast cancer.
32:30And the people who lived there before us, the mother and the daughter, had cancer also.
32:36Sharon Flowers and Marie Sosa's claim has never been supported by a physician.
32:42But they're still taking no chances.
32:43And I've only given her bottled water.
32:46I've never given her tap water.
32:53Which is expensive, but I don't want her to drink the tap water.
32:59A 1987 University of Arizona study showed an abnormal number of heart defects among children born to parents who were exposed to TCE in this neighborhood.
33:09She's been in the hospital three times since July 21st, which it's been a lot in the last two or three months.
33:20The leukemia, it's brought her down a lot.
33:25Her mood's changed and she's not the same little girl that she was two months ago.
33:29Christina Tellez is two years old.
33:32Her mother, Elisa, grew up on the south side.
33:38Christina has leukemia and was born with a heart valve defect.
33:42I think that's too much for one little girl to have to go through.
33:47They tell us that it's clean water, that we're safe for now, but I don't think they even know that for sure.
33:55You don't trust them?
33:57No.
33:58How come?
34:00If they let this go on for this many years, how can you trust them now?
34:07Elisa is one of the residents who are suing Hughes and the Air Force.
34:11Hello.
34:13You're bringing the right people.
34:15You sure are.
34:17Pete Lopez is another.
34:19He is the former president of the Hughes Machinists Union.
34:22Lopez is drumming up support for the lawsuit among retired Hughes workers.
34:30Any of you are sick and still want to get into that class action suit, you get a hold of me and I'll give you the lawyers names, you can still get in on the class action suit.
34:42Lopez believes the drinking water at the plant killed his wife, who worked there.
34:46She died of cancer in 1984.
34:47He is always on the lookout for witnesses to the toxic dumping.
34:52Contamination in the water that we drank all those years, say.
34:55I remember all that shit.
34:57But I was there.
34:59So was he, so was he.
35:01But many, many times we went down there and we drained that degreasing tank.
35:07Yeah.
35:08And sometimes we run it in the cellar on the floor.
35:15Then we'd get in there and tear out the heater.
35:18Then we'd wash that all out.
35:20And it all went in the sewer.
35:21Yeah.
35:22Every goddamn bit of that.
35:23Yeah.
35:25The Air Force and Hughes deny that they contaminated the South Side's drinking water.
35:31Robert Morrison is the senior executive at Hughes responsible for toxic waste.
35:35He's been here for 20 years.
35:38It was not carelessness or ignorance.
35:42It was, it was an accepted fact back in those days that no one knew of the dangers.
35:51And everyone did the same thing.
35:54Hughes was no different than, as I'm sure as you've been finding out, anyone else across the country.
35:59There was TCE probably dumped on the ground.
36:03We don't know how much.
36:04We have good, pretty good estimates.
36:08Not very many gallons, really.
36:11Nonetheless, in 1981, tests showed TCE levels at 10,000 parts per billion in the groundwater.
36:19One of the largest concentrations ever found under a military installation.
36:22Everyone was quite shocked at what was found.
36:26No one really had any idea that there was, was any contamination underlying the plant site.
36:33But the history of this plant tells a different story.
36:39Almost from the day in 1951, when Hughes started operations on the desert next to this then sleepy western town,
36:46the company began receiving toxic waste warnings.
36:52This State Health Department document, written in 1952 and sent to Hughes, said, quote,
36:59The problem is serious, as it concerns the water supply of a large number of people.
37:04It is therefore recommended that a constant check be maintained.
37:08And many other official records from as far back as the 1950s detail other complaints.
37:13Some former Hughes workers, like Pete Lopez, remember their fears about the toxic waste back in the 50s.
37:21I used to go out at dinner time to, you know, take a walk.
37:27And we walked down, there was a little road along this ditch that they kept cleaned off.
37:33And you go down there and, boy, it just, it smelled bad.
37:38Because they dumped all their chemicals in this ditch.
37:40All the chemicals come out and dumped in this ditch.
37:44Now, at the end of the ditch, it, it tapered off and it formed like a little lake at that part of the desert.
37:53Lopez says vast quantities of waste flowed from the Hughes plant into the surrounding desert.
37:58He even remembers the time the wastes apparently killed cattle on a nearby Indian reservation.
38:07Now, we can't get the ditch.
38:09Now, this here is the bridge.
38:11Here's, here's the little wash where the water, water run through right here on this bridge.
38:16Water run under this bridge, went over in there, and over in there, that was where the cattle was dead, over in that area, over in there, where that tree is, beyond that tree is, where it flowed down through there.
38:30The fence is right there, the Indian reservation fence is right there, and, uh, that's where the cattle were dead, three cows, over there.
38:41Lopez says the wastes that flowed down the ditch also went into large holding ponds, and that some concentrated waste was collected into open pits on Hughes property.
38:52And a 1985 State Health Department report confirms this.
38:58It says Hughes poured wastes into open pits and ponds until the mid-1970s.
39:03Never, to my knowledge, have we ever, did Jews ever, to my knowledge now, since 69, did we ever drain any solvents to the desert.
39:17Through the waste stream.
39:19Through the waste stream. In some other way?
39:22They were dumped in a couple of different pits.
39:26Oh, so they were dumped in pits?
39:30Yes.
39:31In large quantities?
39:33Uh, small quantities in my judgment.
39:37It might be larger in some people's judgment.
39:39Well, what quantities are we talking about?
39:44I don't, I can't remember the numbers, but it's, uh...
39:47You're talking about thousands of gallons, are we not?
39:50I would say in the low thousands.
39:52So it wasn't correct what you said before, when, uh, you said that solvents, after you came here in 69, that solvents were no longer, uh...
40:01They were not dumped in the, down the ditches. They were never dumped in the pond, in the waste streams.
40:07So instead of going into the ditches, they went into pits?
40:10They went into pits.
40:12Yeah. But these are unlined pits.
40:14Has it not been determined since then that, indeed, the solvents dumped into the pits also went down into the ground water?
40:23Well, some of them did, yeah.
40:24Yeah, some of them didn't.
40:25Sure.
40:26Yeah.
40:28So this, then, is the issue.
40:30Did Hughes dump thousands of gallons of waste into open pits and ponds?
40:35And did that pollution enter the ground water and seep into the south side?
40:39The state report says, quote, full-strength liquids were disposed of in pits and ponds from 1952 until the mid-1970s.
40:49And the state report cites further evidence that Hughes' handling of toxic waste was casual, if not careless.
40:55But Morrison says the state is wrong.
40:58Well, this report is wrong.
41:00That's what I'm saying.
41:02It's wrong. The Arizona Department of Health Services is wrong in this report, what it says here.
41:09That's why you said.
41:11All right.
41:12This man says Morrison is wrong on another point. He was Hughes' water consultant for 20 years.
41:19You saw in this way the testimony you were given at this deposition being the truth of the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help you God?
41:24I do.
41:25This is the sworn testimony of Leonard Halpenny.
41:29It was videotaped as part of the Southside Residence lawsuit.
41:33Do you recall being again contacted by Hughes in 1979?
41:37Yes, I do.
41:38And who contacted you on this occasion?
41:40Well, I'd have to look at the letter that resulted from that.
41:44Mr. Robert Morrison.
41:46Okay.
41:48Morrison had him taken to a spot in the desert at the Hughes plant Halpenny had never seen before, a toxic waste dump.
41:56And I became deeply disturbed. I asked what they were.
42:00And among them was paint, crankcase oil, and other liquids that needed disposition.
42:10After I finished that meeting, I came home to my office and I had, in my opinion, a crisis of conscience.
42:20My crisis of conscience was that here was something that had been going on for 20 years or so that I never knew about until that day.
42:30I didn't know what was being dumped into the pond.
42:32I was concerned that something that might have been dumped into the pond might have been hazardous in some manner, and I had not been informed about it.
42:43So I resigned. My letter of August 24, 1979 constitutes a resignation.
42:50And I didn't even send a bill.
42:54Do you know why that was, that he was no longer willing to work for Hughes Aircraft?
42:58I don't have any idea.
43:00Well, let you read the letter that he wrote to you.
43:08Halpenny's letter says he not only felt misled by Hughes, but that two other toxic ponds he had known about had never been cleaned up as he recommended.
43:18Morrison says they were cleaned up.
43:22So your consultant was wrong in what you're saying?
43:26He erred when he wrote the letter. That's what I'm saying.
43:29Yeah.
43:30While Hughes argued over the details of the disposal of their toxins, the Air Force itself decided to initiate its own investigation.
43:42Routinely, the small Air Force staff at the plant has to rely on out-of-town Air Force personnel for environmental expertise.
43:51I haven't seen you quite well.
43:54Hello, Chuck.
43:56Based at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio, they watch over environmental matters at this and 12 other plants.
44:05Colonel Peter Rupert is a former cargo pilot recently assigned to the Environmental Division.
44:11...quality regulations that are being proposed in the House right now and in Congress.
44:17Charles Alford has degrees in public administration and psychology.
44:20His Air Force title is environmental program manager.
44:24In the waste minimization studies where we're trying to look at all the emissions from all the chemicals used throughout the plant.
44:32Alfred visits Hughes four times a year, but only a few days at a time.
44:37You know, Bob, if the federal facilities are especially treated under the...
44:41Both Alfred and Rupert say they have confidence in their relationship with Hughes, and especially with Morrison.
44:46The Air Force's 1982 investigation also had to rely on meetings with Hughes personnel and with its own in-plant Air Force staff.
44:56In this report, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, the Air Force plant commander at the time, Lieutenant Colonel Grant Hurd, is paraphrased as saying that Hughes had acted responsibly in disposing of its wastes.
45:09This is Lieutenant Colonel Hurd in 1983.
45:13In another document, Hurd reports that Hughes' practice always had been to recycle its TCE rather than dump it in the desert.
45:21At the end of its investigation, the Air Force decided to absolve Hughes of financial responsibility and decided to pay for the cleanup themselves, a cost to the taxpayers of at least $30 million.
45:34One year later, Colonel Hurd left the Air Force to take an executive position at Hughes in Tucson.
45:42Congress later passed a law which would have prevented this kind of revolving door activity, but Colonel Hurd, while refusing to grant frontline an interview, denied on the telephone any conflict of interest.
45:52The Air Force not only agreed to pay for the cleanup, but also awarded Hughes the multi-million dollar contract to clean up its own waste.
46:01Morrison was put in charge.
46:09What he built was a state of the art facility to clean up the toxic waste.
46:13Wells are sunk into the underground pollution.
46:20It is pumped up and monitored by these computers.
46:24After it is run through these filter tanks, it is sent back into the ground.
46:30In the past, the pollution that was dumped in the desert flowed north towards Tucson, while some pollution came from sources like the airport.
46:38By 1985, the EPA had estimated that the pollution covered a four square mile area and that most of it came from Hughes.
46:48But Hughes and the Air Force say they only contributed one third of the pollution and it stops at this highway.
46:55The highway borders the south side, so the chances of the south side residents getting a state of the art facility to clean up their groundwater depends on the outcome of a long bureaucratic battle between the Air Force and the EPA.
47:11Leaving a lot of residents still angry about why they think it happened in the first place.
47:15Well, I think probably out of greed because they sure in heck knew that those chemicals weren't any good to go into the ground like that or go into the air, people breathing it.
47:32It was no good. I think that they must have known and just didn't give a damn.
47:43I don't know what else. I don't know what else.
47:47If in Tucson the Air Force was only willing to clean up a portion of the toxic waste, then how much the Pentagon will be willing to do at thousands of other places will depend on how much money and how high a priority they are willing to assign this issue.
48:05In Washington, there is at least one congressman who has held hearings on this subject and is increasingly frustrated by the military's performance.
48:15Congressman Mike Sinar is a Democrat from Oklahoma.
48:20Nice haircut, Ted.
48:23Boy, you don't know how close.
48:27Hello, Michael. Hey, guys.
48:30Is this where we're getting briefed?
48:33All right.
48:34Sinar's subcommittee is preparing to take the military to task.
48:37Hey, Robert. How are you?
48:39Well, regrettably, this is what we found in almost every military operation that we've looked at, whether it be the Air Force, the Navy, or the Army, is that we're almost looking at it facility by facility to get the military to respond.
48:51Unless they are caught red-handed, they have a sense of deniability that it's really not their problem that they've contracted it out or the problem doesn't exist in the severity that we claim it is.
49:05Sinar has decided he has no alternative but to call the military into a hearing room and demand some answers.
49:12He's been hammering away on this for five years.
49:24Today, all the top military environmental officials are in the hearing room.
49:30The subcommittee will come to order.
49:32Our original investigations and hearings indicated that there were serious problems in DOD's hazardous waste programs.
49:41Our purpose today will be to determine how much progress, if any, has been made in solving these problems.
49:48The hearing has drawn a full house.
49:50The testimony you're about to give is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
49:56I do. Thank you very much.
49:58The chief representatives of the Army, Navy,
50:03defense logistics, the Air Force,
50:07and an undersecretary of defense, Carl Schaefer.
50:11Let me ask you this, Mr. Schaefer.
50:14Are we going to clean these up in my lifetime or your lifetime?
50:17The good Lord willing, we certainly will.
50:20This is not easy.
50:22And the issue is that...
50:24That, my friend, may be the greatest understatement that we have in this whole hearing and in the last five years.
50:29We want to fix it, and we want it to be right.
50:32And at the same time, we are not recalcitrants.
50:36We are not anti-environment.
50:38We are, on the contrary, determined to get these problems identified and fixed.
50:44And fixed.
50:46But for Sinar, the issue is not just the military's accountability.
50:51All right, let's go to another side, Air Force Plant number 44, Tucson, Arizona.
50:56Now, 1981...
50:57But also, the Pentagon's relationship to its private defense contractors.
51:01I'm from Muskogee, Oklahoma.
51:04Mr. and Mrs. Smith live on 14th Street in Muskogee, Oklahoma.
51:08What they're going to read tomorrow about Tucson is this.
51:12They're going to read that Hughes Aircraft improperly disposed of hazardous waste that they were under contract to with the Air Force.
51:20But the Air Force has decided that they're going to pay for it.
51:24Not only are they going to pay for it, they're going to pay them a profit for it.
51:29And so, Hughes Aircraft is not being slapped on the wrist, is not being held accountable like Mr. and Mrs. Smith on 14th Street may be if they dump something in their backyard or some company in Muskogee.
51:42And what am I going to tell them?
51:45Why there are two sets of standards, one for private industry and one for the public?
51:50I mean, what am I going to tell them? What do you want me to tell them?
51:53I can't answer that. I'm not qualified to answer the question in terms of the contractual relationship between the Department of the Air Force and Hughes.
52:02What am I going to tell them, Mr. Schaefer?
52:07I mean, I think this is crazy.
52:09This is crazy.
52:10Here we have a company that improperly disposed of hazardous waste that now we're going to pay them plus a profit to clean it up.
52:17Well, Mr. Chairman, you're involved in a very difficult procurement arrangement on these contractual arrangements.
52:24I don't care what the difficulty of the procurement arrangement is.
52:28I'm asking you something different than that.
52:30I'm asking you why private industry is held liable and Hughes Aircraft isn't.
52:35Well, that's a good question of liability.
52:40All right. In the 1983 report again, Mr. Rice, it says that Paradise Island Landfill, there is, quote, an estimated 7.8 million gallons of waste.
52:51When are you going to decide whether that site needs restoration, Mr. Rice?
52:56Sir, each of those sites was contained in a phase one study.
53:00All of those are progressing through the RIFS process.
53:03None of them are listed as remedial action yet because we have not determined what the appropriate action is.
53:08When?
53:09I do not know, sir.
53:13Sir, I will have to provide that for the record also.
53:16According to your October 30th update, you're also still studying sites 12, 13, and 14.
53:22And the fact that the 83 phase one report says that, quote, the tanks have been leaking for more than a decade.
53:30There are ongoing contaminations of groundwater by dissolved fuel.
53:37There are thousands of gallons of fuel oil floating in the water table, unquote.
53:43When are you going to proceed on that cleanup, Mr. Rice?
53:46Sir, I do not have specifics on that site either.
53:48Okay, White Oaks Lab, who's going to answer that one?
53:54Who's in charge of that one?
53:55It is a naval facility, sir.
53:56Can you answer anything about that one?
53:58No, sir.
54:00Did you tell these other guys to be prepared?
54:04Did you all meet?
54:07Sir, we did meet, and there are so many areas of interest that it's difficult to know what to be up to speed on.
54:15Well, you've got one Air Force, one Navy, one Army, and where are you from?
54:21Defense Logistics.
54:22Defense Logistics.
54:23I mean, if each one takes their individual category and the sites within the potential sites that we've been talking to you about, it seems like everybody could be prepared, don't you think, Mr. Schaefer?
54:31I'm not trying to be tough, but I mean, you know, I don't want to have to bounce you in here every month.
54:39I mean, the reason we have these hearings is to do it now and not have to come back over and over and over again.
54:44Let me go on.
54:45The Inspector General report states, quote,
54:48Fragmented policies, lack of effective structured management, lack of communication at all levels.
54:54Nearly every installation commander and staff visited indicated that they believed that they were not receiving adequate guidance and support, unquote.
55:02Last month in Tucson, the Environmental Protection Agency, acting on a tip, discovered a barrel apparently containing toxic waste from the Hughes Missile Plant dumped in the city landfill.
55:25Hughes had always denied that it was dumping any waste there.
55:29After the inspection, Hughes Environmental Officer Robert Morrison was suspended from his duties at the plant pending further investigation of the dumping.
55:41In Tennessee, despite the Army's protests, the Milan Ammunition Plant remains on the EPA's Superfund list of the most dangerous toxic waste sites.
55:51And in Jacksonville, Florida, there is still no sign of a settlement between the Navy and the people who lived on Hips Road.
56:01I'm Judy Woodruff. Good night.
56:05Next week on Frontline, the intensely personal agony of incest.
56:10I can't remember when it all started.
56:13Dad making me look at dirty pictures, touching me.
56:17One woman confronts her past.
56:20Why didn't you leave him?
56:22I thought maybe he could, maybe he would straighten out.
56:25Watch to a safer place on Frontline.
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