'Hell No' to a Park and Homes at El Toro
Marine Journalists Demand the Truth

Wecome to Irvine's EPA Superfund site.

Great looking place isn't it? MCAS El Toro was spotless while controlled by the Marines, at least the deadly filth was under the rug. Today that is no longer the case. Salem-News.com photo by Bonnie King

(IRVINE, Calif.) - There is a great movie where the townspeople are possessed, living in a Stepford Wives twilight zone, often chanting, "For the greater good".

I wonder if they will eventually start doing that in Irvine. The people have to be smarter than their elected officials are letting on.

They are trying to peddle the El Toro Marine Corps base in all of its toxic glory as a park and real estate, and the ground they see dollar signs on is mutilating the bodies of former Marines at the very moment I write this with hideous things like cancer.

Some of them survive, like Salem-News.com Writer Bob O'Dowd and Consultant John Uldrich. Others aren't so lucky. My former sergeant is a cancer survivor who has had to bury two of his children due to cancer.

Two of my sons, both 100% El Toro babies, had problems in their first year of life that we now connect to TCE (trichloroethylene) contamination.

Other known contaminants are numerous, they include PCE (perchloroethylene), Benzene, Perchlorate, and every type of aviation fuel.

There are also serious reports of contamination from enriched Uranium U-235 and in the early 1980's, El Toro was constantly the setting for massive anti-nuclear protests. I know, I was there as a Marine during these years, in the exact same Aviation Group that the other former El Toro Marines / Salem-News.com team members referenced in this report.

To the misfortune of the Marines and Irvine and Lennar Corp. and all of the other hands in this pot, some of us, like Roger Butow and myself, haven't gotten sick at all, and along with the others, we are here to report endlessly about this tragic mistake in the making. We have been at it for three years as of next month, and we have gained contact and the relevant stories of hundreds of former Marines in the process, but we have a long, long way to go.

We offer no apology for our reporting style either, you could say this is extremely biased writing and I could hardly defend that. To explain the brotherhood that exists between Marines is like telling the story of the greatest bond on earth. You can not break that, I can not break that, it is just a fact. The people who choose to put themselves through the most difficult challenges often spend their whole lives in that same mode.

If that is our story then let it be, but I cry for the terrible pain and suffering and we demand that this charade of Irvine is drawn to a close. It will happen, because the day will come when we are not the only ones reporting about this, and even on our own we are reaching thousands every day.

I have seen Marines in every conceivable way and place; flying twenty feet off the ground sideways in a CH-46 out of Fallujah, freezing their asses off in Bagram during the winter, but I have never seen them surrender or leave their dead behind, and we won't be doing it either.

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Tim King is a former U.S. Marine with twenty years of experience on the west coast as a television news producer, photojournalist, reporter and assignment editor. In addition to his role as a war correspondent, this Los Angeles native serves as Salem-News.com's Executive News Editor. Tim spent the winter of 2006/07 covering the war in Afghanistan, and he was in Iraq over the summer of 2008, reporting from the war while embedded with both the U.S. Army and the Marines.

Tim holds numerous awards for reporting, photography, writing and editing, including the Oregon AP Award for Spot News Photographer of the Year (2004), first place Electronic Media Award in Spot News, Las Vegas, (1998), Oregon AP Cooperation Award (1991); and several others including the 2005 Red Cross Good Neighborhood Award for reporting. Serving the community in very real terms, Salem-News.com is the nation's only truly independent high traffic news Website. You can send Tim an email at this address: newsroom@salem-news.com