US Camps “Polluted” According to Korean Authorities

Korean environmental authorities are trying to force USFK to pay to “cleanup” the camps that were closed out and awaiting turn over to the Korean government:

According to a statement by the environment and defense ministries Monday, the government has now conducted environmental inspections at 29 USFK bases that are to be returned to Korea and found 22 of them contaminated beyond safety standards. They therefore decided to ask the U.S. to handle the cleanup.

However, citing a U.S. Defense Department standard limiting any cleanup to “known, imminent and substantial endangerment,” the USFK says it is under no obligation to clean up a single base. However, under pressure from Korea, Washington is understood to have agreed to clean up eight bases. The confrontation is likely to be protracted since the cost of the cleanup is estimated at W500 billion (around US$500 million).

The environmental officials make it sound like that soldiers were just dumping oil and fuel into the soil of the camps which is totally untrue. If the soil is not safe on these installations as they claim, how come all the soldiers that lived on these bases all these years did not become sick? Plus in all the US motor pools there are fuel water separators plus the motor pools are made of concrete so if there is an oil spill it can be quickly cleaned with dry sweep and put into barrels that are picked up and disposed of by Korean contractors. Also fuel trucks have plastic spillage containers beneath them to prevent fuel spills. These are just a few examples of the US military’s hazardous material prevention techniques.

Having dealt with environmental inspectors before, IMHO they have to justify their existence thus it is in their interest to find something wrong with these camps thus creating a need for an expensive cleanup which I’m sure Korean contractors are all for. I am willing to bet that these camps have less “pollution” then nearby ROK Army bases or even communities across the street from the camps. Go to Uijongbu or Dongducheon and look at the rivers that flow through those cities and see what is floating in them and how bad they smell. How come no one is charging these areas $500 million for a cleanup as well?