DEQ assures clean up of Tanapag

Division of Environmental Quality Director Ike Cabrera yesterday assured that the cleanup in Tanapag Village to be conducted by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to remove PCB contamination will be made following strict federal standards.

DEQ is meeting with representatives of various federal agencies, including health and toxicology experts, to discuss the problem first discovered in the CNMI 11 years ago.

According to Norman Lovelace, manager for Pacific Insular Area Program of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, his office will continue to support DEQ in ensuring that the community’s needs and concerns on this issue are properly addressed.

“We will continue to watch the matter closely and provide our judgment along the way,” he said.

Cabrera said the community in Tanapag will have the chance to meet with the representatives of federal agencies to discuss the issue in a public hearing today. “We have to hear the community. They have the right to have their questions addressed on the issue of clean up and contamination,” he said.

Tanapag Village and the Lower Base Cemetery have been contaminated by polychlorinated biphenyl (PCBs) and dioxins. DEQ was first notified about the presence of electrical capacitors scattered throughout Tanapag in 1988.

These capacitors were used then as boundary markers, road blocks for driveways, windbreakers for barbecue sites and headstones. When the presence of these capacitors was brought to the attention of DEQ, Cabrera took one sample to Guam EPA which discovered that they contained 100 percent PCB oil. The capacitors found in Tanapag
were later on shipped to the mainland for disposal.

Four years after the capacitors were discovered, the Department of Defense accepted responsibility for the PCB capacitors making the site eligible for remediation under the Defense Environmental Restoration Program.

The remediation went on and off for six years and in August 1999, the on-site treatment stopped as some 1,094,000 pounds of PCB and dioxin-contaminated soil were shipped to the mainland for disposal.

Investigations revealed that high concentration remained in the Lower Base cemetery area. DEQ has warned the public against visiting the cemetery due to health hazards from exposure to PCB-contaminated soil.