Bush Administration budget cuts stall toxic cleanup project at airport.

Federal budget cuts have forced local officials to put off plans to clean up toxic chemical spills at the Monterey Peninsula Airport for at least a year and maybe longer.

"Action we could be taking in ''02 will have to be put off until ''03," says Gerald Vincent, who coordinates the clean-up of Formerly Used Defense Sites (FUDS) in Utah, Nevada and northern California for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers office in Sacramento.

Last month Vincent got word that his POM had been cut. POM is the government acronym for Program Objective Memorandum, which is Fedspeak for budget. This year his POM was $10.9 million for "corrective actions" at variously poisoned sites such as the Wendover airbase in Utah, another in Nevada and the Monterey Peninsula Airport. Vincent recently learned that his 2002 budget for projects in three states has been pruned to $9.9 million.

"It''s not a lot of money and that''s my problem," he says. "That''s what Congress appropriated."

Rep. Sam Farr criticized the Bush administration for the cuts.

"It''s absurd that while the Bush Administration wants to increase defense spending for missile defense, it is cutting funding for cleaning up former military sites," Farr told the Weekly. "When the Cold War ended, there was a lot of talk about ''Peace Dividends.'' On the Central Coast and elsewhere around the nation, civilians should be making good use of the land that the military no longer uses."

From 1942 to 1989, the Navy used part of Monterey Peninsula Airport as an auxiliary air station. Groundwater testing in the 1990s detected high levels of a chemical called trichlorethene (TCE)--which is used to remove grease from engine parts. High levels of cancer-causing benzene were also found. The petroleum product is thought to have leaked from underground jet fuel storage tanks.

Though it only came to light last summer, a 1999 report by the Army Corps revealed that cancer-causing chemicals have leaked into the ground below the airport and drifted in plumes underneath the Casanova Oak Knoll neighborhood. Contamination levels in some sites are downright scary.

Due to the cut on Vincent''s POM, any remedial work by the federal government has been delayed. Vincent''s office is not alone. The 2001 budget for the FUDS program across the U.S., was $240 million. This year it''s been cut to $190 million.

The POM cut means that there''s no money for studies and project design work at the airport site, delaying a work contract and actual corrective action. The various studies that set the groundwork for actual cleanup can cost between $400,000 and $600,000. "They''re not cheap," Vincent says.

Still, the feds say they will finish what they started.

"The Corps has made a commitment to the community and the elected officials that we''re going to stay," Vincent says.

Farr agrees that the government will get the task accomplished.

"We''ve started cleaning up these Formerly Used Defense Sites, and it''s time to finish the job," he says.

Farr''s press secretary, Betsey Lordan, says her boss is trying to get $65 million into the Department of Defense Appropriations Bill to be spent on clean-up of FUDS.

theWeeklyTally

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