AGO twits ACOE for ‘sloppy job’

The CNMI government has slammed claims by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers on the polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB) contamination in Tanapag amid efforts by the federal agency to appeal a recent administrative order from the Environmental Protection Agency.

Noting reports made by the Army Corps, the Attorney General’s Office is questioning whether it is doing its job to clean up areas in the village believed to be contaminated with the highly-toxic chemical, according to Assistant Attorney General Murphy Peterson.

“All we want them to do is… to have the place clean up, do it right, just get it done, but not get it done in your way,” he told reporters yesterday.

At the same, he sought consent of the residents of the village in trying to obtain their medical evaluation as he cited concerns over the methods used.

“We are reviewing records to verify that the testing that was done actually tested them for the correct substances. We are very much concerned with that,” he said.

Mr. Peterson attended a hearing last week in Washington D.C. in connection with the appeal on the EPA’s order to defend CNMI’s position regarding the ongoing cleanup in the northern coastal village.

He brought up several issues at the hearing, including claims made by the Army Corps that villagers stole PCB-tainted capacitors left behind by the U.S. military in Tanapag more than three decades ago.

The Army Corps has no evidence to back its claim, said Mr. Peterson.

He also took issue at what appeared to be half-hearted cleanup job being undertaken by the agency, pointing out testing of soil, food and groundwater has not been satisfactory.

For instance, it found high concentration of PCB around a pigpen in Tanapag and yet it did not test the soil in the pen or pigs that were eventually eaten by villagers, he said.

Taro, yams and land crabs were also tested by Army Corps and found to have low contamination, but Mr. Peterson said the report failed to indicate that those samples were gathered from areas with little or no concentration of PCB.

“Our request for them then was to perform a risk assessment,” he told reporters. “We have continued to do that over and over again because risk assessment will determine to what level the cleanup needs to be done.”

According to the government lawyer, the Army Corps is required under the law to conduct this assessment and a feasibility study and it has never done this up to this day.

“What they have done instead is to selectively take different items and test those items and review whether that particular at that particular level will affect the health of the people,” Mr. Peterson explained.

He said the cleanup level chosen — the one part per million — is not even the most conservative in the irradiation level.

Moreover, there has not been full characterization of all the contaminants in the soil as he cited other poisonous chemicals such as leak fuel tanks that may have exposed the village to other hazardous substances.

Since the Army Corps is in the process of shipping equipment to remove PCB contamination in the soil it has dug up, Mr. Peterson said he raised this issue at the Washington meeting in order not to waste money.

“How can you ship machinery that is supposed to clean only one contaminant in the soil,” he explained.

EPA is expected to come out with a decision on the Army Corps’ appeal and the CNMI’s opposition in two weeks, Mr. Peterson said.

Meanwhile, he called on Tanapag residents to sign a consent form that will be published in the newspapers and distributed in the village to allow the AGO to obtain results of their medical evaluation.