High levels of environmental contamination still exist at the former Myrtle Beach Air Force Base more than 15 years after the military left, but experts say the pollution is not affecting new retail and residential developments there.
The contamination also is not related to groundwater pollution discovered last year in a roughly 10-block neighborhood near the AVX Corp. manufacturing facility, which is located adjacent to the base, according to state and federal officials.
Environmental tests over the past three years show chemicals such as benzene, vinyl chloride and trichloroethylene, or TCE, exist in groundwater at the former military base at levels far above what the Environmental Protection Agency considers safe for drinking water.
The groundwater has not been used for drinking water since 1999, but state and federal regulators still require the military to reduce pollution to those standards.
State and federal officials believe none of the pollution is located in groundwater beneath The Market Common and other new retail and residential developments.
While some of the contaminated sites are within a few hundred feet of those projects, tests show the pollution largely is being contained.
Government agencies overseeing cleanup at the base say the contamination likely does not pose a health threat for people living, visiting or working at the new shops, restaurants and homes.
Other experts, however, debate whether some of the contaminants – especially TCE – are more harmful than previously thought. Even though no one is drinking the water, they say harmful vapors might be seeping through the soil at contaminated sites.
The contamination also illustrates how vexing it can be to clean up toxic chemicals once they have been released into the environment.
The military has spent more than $53 million on cleanup efforts since the base closed in March 1993 and expects to spend $10 million more before the job is finished.
Even so, that price tag is cheap compared with cleanup at other closed military facilities. The Pentagon has decommissioned 118 major facilities since 1991 and spends more than $1 billion a year to clean pollution at those sites. Contamination levels have fluctuated wildly at some sites at the former Myrtle Beach base, showing reductions one year and then sharp increases the next.
One site recorded its highest-ever level of TCE – 42,200 parts per billion – in 2006, five years after a series of cleanup pumps were installed.
Five parts per billion is the maximum safe level for TCE, according to the EPA.
It will take at least two more decades to reduce contamination at some sites to safe levels, environmental reports show, and the Air Force recently signed a new 10-year contract with Shaw Group Inc., the company hired to clean up the contamination.
“It took a long time for this contamination to happen,” said Ken Taylor, with the S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control, one of several agencies charged with overseeing base cleanup. “It takes a long time to clean it up.”
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