South Korea Begins Works to Decontaminate US Bases
By Jung Sung-ki
Staff Reporter
The Army's new unit for environmental cleanup has begun its operations to decontaminate U.S. bases that have been returned to South Korea, the Ministry of National Defense said Thursday.
The 512-member unit composed of two engineering battalions was inaugurated in June and has gone through 100 days of study and field training, it said in a press release.
The unit is taking measures to curb the spread of pollution in 23 returned bases and check related facilities including the sewage systems, it said.
The U.S. Forces Korea (USFK) has returned 32 of 59 U.S. military facilities agreed to be returned to the Seoul government under a 2004 land swap deal aimed at repositioning U.S. troops south of Seoul.
Some environmental groups have argued that the decontamination levels of the returned land have not met national environmental standards.
According to a government report submitted to the National Assembly, an estimated $85 million will be required to clean up the land to a level that allows fruit cultivation; and decontaminating the lands to grow rice will require $19 million.
The USFK has argued that it made efforts that ``go beyond'' the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) between South Korea and the United States by removing polluted underground storage tanks inside camps, removing lead and copper left at former firing ranges using an advanced technique called ``bio-slurping,'' treating petroleum-contaminated soil by creating vents in the land and skimming fuel from groundwater.
The SOFA stipulates that USFK can return land without removing pollutants so long as such land poses no ``known, imminent, and substantial endangerment to human health.''