USFK chemical dump scandal escalating

`Every imaginable chemical’ buried in Bucheon

By Lee Tae-hoon

A retired U.S. soldier wrote on a website in 2004 that U.S. troops buried a wide range of toxic chemical substances in a military base in Bucheon, Gyeonggi Province, in the early 1960s.

“We dug a pit with a bulldozer — donned rubber suits and gas masks and dump every imaginable chemical, hundreds of gallons if not more — into the ground on a knoll,” Ray Bows said in a message posted on the Korean War Project, a website dedicated to former U.S. servicemen.

Bow served as a non-commissioned officer at the U.S. Army Chemical Depot Korea (USACDK) in Camp Mercer, Bucheon from July 1963 to April 1964.

The retired U.S. soldier commented that he was surprised to find out that the burial of the harmful materials had had little effect on the ecosystem.

“Yet, when I returned to Korea and revisited Camp Mercer in 1978, I saw no noticeable change in the surrounding countryside plant-life wise, which I found surprising,” he recalled.

Bows said the USACDK moved from Bucheon to Camp Carroll in Chilgok, North Gyeongsang Province, in early 1964 due to the former’s proximity to the Demilitarized Zone that divides the two Koreas.

“The Chemical Depot was too close to the DMZ,” he added, explaining why the relocation took place.

A Korean military unit is currently stationed at the old U.S. chemical depot in Bucheon.

Camp Carroll, where the USACDK was relocated, is a site where the U.S. Army belatedly acknowledged that it had buried hazardous chemical materials including Agent Orange.

On Monday, Lt. Gen. John D. Johnson, commanding general of the Eighth U.S. Army, said that he discovered a 1992 U.S. military report that indicates a large number of drums containing chemicals, pesticides, herbicides and solvents were buried in Camp Carroll.

A 1991 U.S. military document that The Korea Times has obtained reveals that Camp Carroll was not only a chemical depository, but also the largest waste producing military base.

“Because of maintenance and repair activities, Camp Carroll is the largest hazardous waste generator in EUSA,” the report by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said. EUSA stands for the Eighth United States Army, which oversees some 20,000 of the 28,500 U.S. troops stationed in Korea.

The report shows Camp Caroll annually obtained more than 14,000 gallons of used oil and 2,400 gallons of battery acid as it housed a major assembly plant for the repair and rebuilding of engines and transmissions.

It also reveals that the U.S. military made little effort to conserve the environment.

“Some installations had not yet designated area hazardous waste managers,” it said, noting that field inspections revealed “deficiencies in hazardous waste handling, signs, and storage areas.”

The report also said that the U.S. Defense Reutilization and Marketing Office had disposed of 447 drums of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) through an in-country disposal contractor with a “Korean Office of Environment permit,” but no records were found for either a permit or disposal monitoring.

Production of PCBs has been banned in the U.S. since the late 1970s due to their toxicity.

Former U.S. soldiers stationed at Camp Carroll have testified in a news report by Phoenix-based broadcaster KPHO that they buried 250 drums of leftover Agent Orange in the camp compound in the late 1970s.

Agent Orange contains dioxin, which is notorious for causing serious health problems, including mental illness, cancer and fetal deformities in those who are exposed to it.

미군, 부천시에도 화학물질 매립해

고엽제 매립 의혹이 제기된 경북 칠곡군 미군기지 캠프 캐럴 외에 경기도 부천에 있었던 캠프 머서에도 화학물질을 매립했었다는 주장이 뒤늦게 공개되었다. .

미 캠프 머서에서 근무했던 레이 바우스씨는 지난 2004년 `한국전 프로젝트' 홈페이지에 올린 글을 통해 그 가 1960년대 초 “모든 상상 가능한 화학물질 수백 갤런”을 매립하는데 참여를 했다고 했다.

레이 바우씨는 캠프 머서에서 1963년 7월부터 1964년 4월까지 근무했다.

그는 또 캠프 머서에 주한미군 화학물질저장소(USACDK.US Army Chemical depot Korea)가 있었으나, 1964년 3∼4월께 왜관의 캠프 캐럴로 이전했다고 말했다.