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The US and South Korea are in negotiations regarding the return of the Camp Market military base in the Bupyeong District of Incheon to the South Korean government. Areas A & B are to be returned to South Korea

Camp Market, a US military base scheduled for return in Incheon’s Bupyeong district, is suffering severe soil contamination with dioxin, PCBs, and other highly toxic carcinogens, oils, and heavy metals, survey findings show. Underground water at the site was also found to be contaminated with total petroleum hydrocarbons (TPH) and trichloroethylene (TCE).

The Ministry of Environment released findings on Oct. 27 from an environmental survey conducted inside the Camp Market site through a South Korea-US agreement. The announced findings came from on-site investigations conducted during the periods July 2015-Mar. 2016 and June–Sept. 2016 as part of SOFA joint environmental assessment procedures during the Ministry’s talks with US Forces Korea on the site’s return.

Among the areas of Camp Market scheduled for return, the study showed the presence of dioxin at all 33 survey sites in areas used for the US military’s Defense Reutilization and Marketing Office (DRMO). The highest concentration was 10,347 picograms (trillionths of a gram) toxic equivalency (TEQ) per gram, while seven of the 33 sites surveys had levels in excess of 1,000pg-TEQ/g.

The highest concentration detected was 185 times higher than the 55.748pg-TEQ/g maximum measured in 2012 and 2014 soil surveys conducted outside the base by Bupyeong District and the Ministry of Environment. Due to an absence of soil standards, official surveys on dioxin are not conducted in South Korea – but the level is over 4,000 times higher than the 2.280pg-TEQ/g average reported in academic papers and reports for ordinary areas without an incineration plant or other clear contamination source present.

“While there are likely to be differences according to the depth of soil surveyed, the level of contamination at Camp Market is extremely severe if we compare it to the dioxin concentration of around 10pg-TEQ/g found in South Korean farmland soil where pesticides have been sprayed,” explained Chonbuk National University environmental engineering professor Kim Jong-guk.

The findings bear out predictions of severe contamination with potentially fatally toxic substances such as dioxin and PCBs due to the Camp Market DRMO’s past activities with USFK machinery and vehicle reutilization and handling of waste materials.

In terms of petroleum contamination, the findings showed maximum concentrations of 24,904mg/kg for TPH, 1.6mg/kg for benzene, and 18.0mg/kg for xylene. Contamination with copper, lead, arsenic, zinc, nickel, cadmium, chromium-6, mercury, and other heavy metals was also found, with maximum concentrations of 51,141.6mg/kg for lead and 29,234.2mg/kg for copper. Even when compared with the loosest soil environment standards used with factory land and defense/military facilities, the levels were 73 times higher for lead, 14.6 times for copper, and 12.5 times for TPH.

The revelations of severe contamination with potentially fatal dioxin is expected to stir up a debate over investigations into the potential health impacts on nearby residents and the costs of a cleanup. To date, USFK has returned all US bases without cleanup, citing “known, imminent and substantial endangerment” (KISE) of human health as its principle for remediation within returned sites. The contamination conditions revealed at Camp Market in Bucheon could be seen as requiring the US military to perform a cleanup even when the KISE principle is applied.

“In terms of whether the dioxin found correspondents to [the] KISE [standard], we plan to continue constructive discussions with the US and open up full-scale negotiations on that area in the near future,” said Cho Gu-rae, head of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs North America bureau, in an Oct. 27 briefing at the Sejong Government Complex.

The administration stressed the importance of the Camp Market contamination revelations as the first example of such conditions being made public based on South Korea-US agreements for a base scheduled for return to South Korea. In the past, the Ministry of Environment has typically received contamination conditions only for US bases that have been fully returned; in some cases, lawsuits by environmental groups have resulted in partial details on contamination being disclosed for bases where return negotiations are still under way. One limitation of the South Korea-US agreement is that it only applies to Camp Market, and not to all US bases to be returned in the future.

By Kim Jeong-su, senior staff writer

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