'Larry Agran, Great Park Gangbanger: Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire?'

(LAGUNA BEACH) - Larry Agran's dream is turning out to be Orange County's nightmare. Costs soaring, the promised pollyanna tax revenue for the County diving, it just gets worse by the day. The contaminant cleanup budget soars, removal progressing slowly and ineffective for water-borne pollutants migrating region-wide. Little or no preemptive risk assessment, no contingency or fallback strategy. No Plan B, Just Plan A(gran).

We need an OC Grand Jury intervention, and like Watergate, let's have the OC District Attorney's Office follow the money.

Irvine's chosen developer, Lennar Homes, has a decades long reputation and fiscal nationwide history rife with horror stories, vendor mischief and LLC bankruptcies, yet it continues to do business in spite of its ineptitude and lapses. The hyperbolic "Great Park", probably the bubble or wedge issue that seduced OC voters to side with the El Toro Reuse folks, only empowered Agran and the City of Irvine in the creation of a cash cow for their coffers.

The media seem to be getting hip to the scam after reading recent articles, and disturbingly, flim-flammed we were. Marketed as sort of "What's good for Irvine is good for the OC," Agran has gone down into his bunker, into damage control, and now he'd try the bold lie instead of the sublime: A la Alfred E. Neuman "What, me worry?", he claims that the evolving cleanup is the gold standard. No, he exhorts in denial, there were no surprises along the way. If not underground, what world IS this guy living in?

These are bald-faced lies. Not a week goes by without another shocking story of either fiscal, ecological or human health abuse by the media. As a Marine who served there in the 60's, as a water quality watchdog and concerned citizen, I attended the initial meetings of both The Great Park and MCAS El Toro rehab. The park started shrinking faster than the eye or mind could fathom, the costs of contaminant removal or remediation skyrocketed, the environmentally hazardous fallout rippling outward.

Now we see that Irvine took out a $100 million policy with AIG (Yes, Dorothy, THAT AIG) in 2005 to cover potential environmental litigation exposure through 2020. If the cleanup is the gold standard, why the insurance?

The recent revelations about stubborn Volatile Organic Compounds like TCE that still permeate the soil and aquifer are alarming and add insult to injury as Agran denies them. Spread via the drinking water system pumped from the aquifer wells provided at the site until its closure, TCE may have caused serious subsequent health problems for the Marines, their families, and the school system staff on the base. Marines who formally served there are doggedly investigating cancer clusters with El Toro potable water as the nexus, the same chemical scandal at USMC Camp Lejeune now entering a confrontational litigation phase in both the US Congress and North Carolina.

We as voters were suckered. We supported this base conversion only to discover Irvine seize 100% control, seeming to reflect their hidden agenda was to reap whatever financial rewards would come. Ultimately, local, state and US taxpayers may be forced to bail out this gang.

Roger E. Butow is the Founder & Executive Director of Clean Water Now! You can send Roger an email at this address: rogerbutow@cleanwaternow.com or drop him a line at:

Here is a complete list of the articles that have been generated on the contamination of the former Marine Base at El Toro and at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina:

Launched in 2010, Odd Man Out is the creation of Roger von Bütow, a professional environmental consultant. Written exclusively for the Salem-News, it's intended as the next evolutionary step on the path of an eco-warrior.

Disgusted by chronic sewage spills and toxic urban runoff pollution that triggered constant beach closures in his area, he formed “Clean Water Now!” in 1998. Local surfers, skimmers and divers were pissed off, but there wasn’t a cohesive, unified and aggressive group response, zero leadership or activism facilitated by the Surfrider Foundation or Sierra Club regarding water quality impairment issues. You can write to Roger at: rogerbutow@mac.com

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RJO January 9, 2010 9:08 am (Pacific time)

Roger, good news story. I was stationed at El Toro in the 60s, too. If I lived in OC, I'd take a very close look at the package of goods sold by the Navy, EPA, and city of Irvine. The Navy and EPA identified 25 contaminated sites at El Toro. TCE is not the only organic solvent and contaminants of concern in the soil and groundwater. The TCE plume originated from the southwest quadrant of the base, the most industrialized portion of the base and the area designated as part of the Great Park. The Navy found eleven contaminated sites in this area. Contaminants included VOCs, SVOCs, pesticides, PCBs, TPH, TRPH, herbicides, metals, and dioxins (from the former Crash Crew burn pits). This area includes Bldg. 296, a huge maintenance hangar and one of the sources for the TCE plume spreading for miles into OC. The state of California has yet to release this hangar from its restricted radiological classification. It seems that a Ra 226 paint room contaminated portions of the hangar. Ra 226 has a half life of 1,600 years. If any of the radium got into the soil, it will be there for a long time. As a resident of OC, you may want to ask the Navy why they transferred over 1,000 acres in the Northeast quadrant to the FAA and FBI before the public auction sale to Lennar. The transfer saved the Navy from paying for remediation costs. Neither the FAA nor the FBI has any responsibility for remediation work. I’d be really concerned about this one since the groundwater flows through this area.

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