Published in the Asbury Park Press
By KIRK MOORE
STAFF WRITER
LAKEHURST -- Federal environmental health experts are coming to town today for a public meeting about the old Bomarc missile site in nearby Plumsted, where an Air Force plan to clean up plutonium-tainted soil from a 1960 nuclear accident has stirred strong opposition.
The Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry will hold the session from 5 to 8 p.m. today at the Lakehurst Community Hall, 207 Center St. It's "less a meeting than an open house" for area residents to come in and talk about their concerns, said ATSDR spokesman Mike Groutt.
Many residents and municipal officials in Lakehurst, Manchester and Jackson have spoken out. The Air Force plans to remove soil and concrete from around one missile shelter, truck it to a railroad siding here, and ship it by train to a low-level radioactive waste landfill in Utah.
Groutt said the ATSDR's interest in the Bomarc site predates the present controversy. By law, the agency must do public health assessments of all polluted sites on the National Priority List -- the so-called Superfund sites -- and Bomarc is being addressed this year along with nearby McGuire Air Force Base, Groutt said.
"We did a public health assessment on Fort Dix last year, but we felt it would be better to do Bomarc as a separate assessment," he said.
The Bomarc site, a Cold War anti-aircraft missile battery, was built on Fort Dix property by the Air Force and became operational in early 1960.
In June of that year, a pressure tank ruptured inside one missile and set off an intense fire that melted the thermonuclear warhead. For 40 years some oxidized plutonium particles have remained in the soil and under pavement at the fire site.
Environmental experts hired by the Air Force have said plutonium is not very mobile in the Pinelands environment and never moved far from the scene of the blaze. But the metal is also highly toxic, and takes 24,000 years to lose one-half of its radioactive potency, which can cause cancer if particles are ingested by people.
Earlier this year, Air Force officials and private contractors offered assurances that soil from the Bomarc site would be safely handled on its truck and train route through Ocean County. But municipal officials in Lakehurst and Manchester have refused to endorse that plan.
Published on May 31, 2000
|
