By It must be a slow news day to rehash this old story:
Concerns over pollution in and around U.S. military bases here continue to grow with the revelation this week that South Korea has spent millions of dollars over the past decade removing contaminated groundwater from the area around two bases.
Seoul has spent the equivalent of $3.4 million to remove nearly 2,000 tons of oil-contaminated groundwater since 2001 near U.S. Army Garrison-Yongsan and the adjoining Camp Kim, a city official confirmed Wednesday following news reports.
The city believes the oil is coming from separate leaks at the two military installations, said the official, who is part of the city’s Urban Safety Headquarters underground water management team and was in charge of the testing outside the bases. [Stars & Stripes]
Revelation? The Yongsan oil spill has been an ongoing issue going back 10 years now. The cost to the Seoul city government for the clean up is not new news either. Here was an update on this issue that the Hankyoreh published over two years ago:
On March 23 a group of workers gathered at the tall observation well that stands by the road linking the Samgakji subway station with the Seoul Station opposite of the Yongsan Army Garrison. The workers of Korea Rural Community Corporation are contracted with the city of Seoul to remove oil leaks from U.S. military installations. The workers come to this site once a month to clear oil found inside the observation well.
Clean-up has been taking place since July 2006 when a large amount of oil leaking from the Yongsan Army Garrison in central Seoul was found. The well’s inside has been so blackened due to oil leaks that it seems to be an endless abyss, and when the palm-sized cover of the observation well opens, an odor of oil comes out. The workers place oil detectors inside the well and use a tube to pump out the underground water. When the tube comes out, dark brown oil and underground water exude separately. The ends are place in a 500 ml bottle, and this time it took only five minutes to fill the bottle up with oil.
Since 2001, the city of Seoul has spent 2.1 billion won removing floating oil in regions near the Yongsan Garrison. Reports indicate it spend an additional 425 million won this year. [Hankyoreh]
The S&S article seems to be inspired by this Yonhap article a day prior that lists the ongoing costs to the city for the oil spill clean up. Like I said before this issue nothing new and the cost of the clean up is nothing new either because it is something that the anti-US groups have been using for years to get SOFA revisions to force USFK to pay the costs for the clean up. As far as the Yongsan oil spill I think USFK is reluctant to accept full responsibility for the pollution because who knows how much the surrounding community has been dumping pollutants into the ground as well? Additionally trying to link this issue to the agent orange issue is quite a stretch in my opinion considering the agent orange claims right now appear to not be true and the barrels that were buried on Camp Carroll was done illegally and uncovered and investigated a year later. That is far different from the oil tank leak that contributed to the mess underneath Yongsan.
She hasn’t seen...
3:46 am on June 10th, 2011 1
If the Korean media is running stories like this too — are we near an election year?
Is that why NK announced the “bribery” thing a couple days ago?
3:47 am on June 10th, 2011 2
I can’t remember how many times I’ve seen Koreans pouring everything imaginable down the sewers as I walked through Seoul. I remember exactly in Hongdae some construction workers pouring paint thinner in the sewer. I thought about “accidently” throwing my lit cigarette to teach them a lesson
5:47 am on June 10th, 2011 3
Anyone remember reading how researchers poured a radioactive isotope down the drain (or it fell out the window if you believe what they claimed) in Daejon roughly 10 years ago ? I distinctly reading about it in the local media but can’t seem to find a newspaper article about it. The details are fuzzy, but I think there was also something mentioned about it having contaminated the water supply of several water bottling plants in the region.
7:31 am on June 10th, 2011 4
I bet all that contamination really IS USFK oil.
It works like this…
The colonel in charge of service contracts with Korean contractors has a Korean wife… which, of course, he met through a social function arranged by Good Neighbors.
She knows everybody and everybody knows her… so someone slips her a white envelope and suggests she guide her husband into making sure a certain Mr. Kim gets the contract for POL disposal.
At most, her husband is either actively in on it or, at best, he pretends her requests are completely innocent and never questions how she can afford that Lexus SUV.
So, Mr. Kim gets the contract.
His first job is to “dispose” of some “contaminated” jet fuel… which runs his boiler for a year as well as his tanker truck as well as what he sells and trades between his friends. The colonel’s wife gets another envelope as this is all profit.
The next contract is to get rid of some contaminated oil. That is a problem since it could actually require paying a professional company to take it. That would cut into the profit. So, he loads up his truck with a tank full of old oil and drives to one of the nearby spots he had scouted for dumping… the unused septic tank, the abandoned construction site, the hole to wherever… etc.
And dump it he does.
And then it winds up in the groundwater.
I wonder if this story has any truth to it?
7:43 am on June 10th, 2011 5
Teadrinker,
“The details are fuzzy, but I think there was also something mentioned about it having contaminated the water supply of several water bottling plants in the region.”
Hmmm… I have a hard time believing a pourable quantity of any radioactive isotope could “contaminate” bottled water wells in the “region”.
Hundreds of tons of plutonium-contaminated water and cesium-contaminated rainwater has poured across Japan and the Japanese government is claiming everything to be safe.
I know a guy who works at the Daejeon research center and they have accidents every now and then… one was just a few months ago.
I’m all for nuclear power, nuclear medicine, nuclear propulsion, etc… but I’m not sure a nuclear research center should be right in the middle of a city of a million and a half people.
…and the power plants should be downwind from civilization. I vote for Antarctica.
8:34 am on June 10th, 2011 6
I don’t believe any of the many, many articles (English) in the Korean media I’ve read that ever mentioned the local civilian contractor angle: that often USFK contracts out into the local economy jobs like basic waste disposal.
And on the English articles, I have found that the English press often translates artiles from their sister Korean-language papers. They don’t do much self-reporting.
9:28 am on June 10th, 2011 7
#5,
I distinctly remember reading that after they had found there was water contamination, it was traced to that particular (undeclared until then, if I remember correctly) incident. It was probably just very low level contamination that was detected.
12:11 pm on June 10th, 2011 8
The picture has them in front of the USO. I’ve eaten at the canteen often enough to be suspicious myself about what might have seeped into the groundwater.