Monterey County has identified a prime parcel to develop for contractor and light manufacturing tenants. It’s located near the ocean and accessible to future housing developments on Fort Ord.

One minor blemish: the land is next a 120-acre landfill.

The five-area landfill is located northeast of CSU-Monterey Bay in between Imjin Parkway and Intergarrison Road.

The US Army used the landfill as a dumping ground for household and commercial waste from 1960 until the late ‘80s. The Army will be treating the contaminated groundwater below the landfill and extracting methane gas from it for years to come.

Meanwhile, the County has been approached by contractors and retail developers interested in the “Landfill Planning Area,” says Jim Cook, housing and redevelopment director. The 77 acres adjacent to the landfill will soon be conveyed to the county, Cook says.

Part of the land north of Intergarrison Road is slated for office fronts and storage yards for framing and roofing contractors building homes on Fort Ord.

“There is no other space on the Monterey Peninsula for these kind of uses,” Cook says. “It creates an opportunity for the contractors to more competitively bid for construction projects that are going to be coming on the base.”

On Oct. 24, the Board of Supervisors accepted a report that makes the landfill area the county’s second Fort Ord redevelopment priority after East Garrison, a 1,400-unit housing project adjacent to Reservation Road. The strategy also includes development plans for unincorporated parts of Fort Ord like Parker Flats and Laguna Seca.

On Tuesday, Nov. 7, the Board of Supervisors will consider adopting a program that could quickly bring the landfill site to market. If approved, staff will do a feasibility analysis, including conceptual site plans and cost estimates for the industrial park.

The county is also eyeing land near Ord Market on Imjin Parkway for a shopping center with a grocery store.

Cook says it will be about 18 months before ground is broken on either site.

Despite ongoing cleanup of the landfill, state regulators say land adjacent to the dump is developable. State regulations require that land within 1,000 feet of a dumpsite be evaluated for methane gas, says Dan Ward, base closure unit chief for the California Department of Toxic Substances Control. Measures such as vapor barriers on the foundations of the building may be required, Ward says.

Like at other landfills, the decomposing waste is creating the flammable gas. The methane is being monitored with 63 probes, which are also picking up trace amounts of volatile organic compounds such as vinyl chloride and benzene.

With the landfill located just a few hundred feet from CSUMB student housing, there was concern about the dangers of living near the dump after a 2002 report said residents would have an elevated cancer risk.

But a 2004 report that studied ambient air results between 2000 and 2003 found that chemicals in the air were detected at similar levels downwind from the landfill as they were upwind.

Shaw Environmental Inc., the Army’s consultant, concluded that emissions don’t pose a significant risk to public health.

“You can guarantee that as part of any further analysis we will carefully look at those issues,” Cooks says. “If there are any problems we will not continue the project.”

Sitting in her office on Reindollar Avenue in Marina, LeVonne Stone, executive director of the Fort Ord Environmental Justice Network, shakes her head in disbelief at the idea of developing land next to the landfill. Stone pulls out a letter from a father whose daughter went to CSUMB and lived in the student apartments on Trenton Court. During her roughly six-year stay, the student was nauseous at least twice a week, but now that she lives in Los Angeles she is hardly ever sick, the letter says.

With her eyes still watering from last month’s controlled burn, Stone says residents and employees should be better informed about the environmental pollutants on Fort Ord.

“It’s the people that are going to work in the place that are going to have to deal with it. It’s their health,” she says. “It’s just not worth taking a chance on people’s health.”