Defense ministry kicks off clean-up at Incheon USFK base
A building inside Camp Market, a U.S. military base scheduled for return to Korea in Bupyeong-gu, Incheon, is seen in this photo provided by Incheon Metropolitan City in August 2016. Korea Times file
By Jung Da-min
The Ministry of National Defense said Friday it has kicked off a clean-up project for Camp Market, a contaminated U.S. Forces Korea (USFK) base in Bupyeong-gu, Incheon, scheduled for return to South Korea.
The state-run Korea Environment Corporation through assessment and bidding selected a consortium led by Hyundai Engineering and Construction for the project, with the consortium aiming to complete the clean-up process by 2022 after a pilot test using miniaturized equipment.
The initial findings of the contamination, made in October 2017 through on-site surveys by the Ministry of Environment, showed the presence of dioxins at all 33 survey sites in areas used for the U.S. military's Defense Reutilization and Marketing Office (DRMO) inside the Camp Market site.
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 project aims to lower the dioxin concentration level to 100pg-TEQ/g, as decided at a public forum on the issue in March last year.
Last October, the defense ministry launched a civilian-government committee to clean up the USFK base suffering severe soil contamination with dioxins, PCBs and other highly toxic carcinogens, oils and heavy metals.
“We will actively communicate with the Camp Market civilian-government committee launched last October, while opening the process transparently to the public to clean the area safely,” the Ministry of National Defense-U.S. Forces Korea Base Relocation Office said.