Camp Eagle's Dastardly Environmental Crime Against the Korean People

During the fervor of the Water Dumping (coming during the South-North Summit build up (June 7th 2000) and, more importantly, the push by the Korean government to get an environmental section added to the SOFA) the story below brought a quick boost to the spike of hatred. It was a short-lived event, but Green Korea victory.

Green Korea had just finished making a name for itself with the Water Dumping revelations.

It controlled the story in the Korean public:

Dealing another blow to the reputation of U.S. Forces Korea (USFK), a civic group claimed yesterday that huge amounts of untreated aircraft fuel have leaked from an American military camp into a major tap water source for the past 10 years.

"We have confirmed that the Som River, which is the tap water source for about 210,000 Wonju residents, has been exposed to oil contamination until recently," Lim Sam-jin, a GKU official, told a news conference. "The leaked oil has also caused serious soil contamination around the U.S. camp." (Korea Herald 26 Sept. 2000)

Under the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA), USFK was supposed to notify the Korean government of the incident, but did not, although it became aware of the situation in June during repair work on the underground oil storage tank, the group said.

"The American military has unscrupulously dumped used oil into the tap water source. We will demand a through investigation and punishment for those responsible," a GKU official said. (Korea Herald 27 September 2000)

I recommend that you check out Green Korea's website, particularly its early mission statements, to see how dedicated the group is to the Korean environment as opposed to more basic anti-US military goals.

(Summer 2005 UPDATE -- It seems Green Korea has cleaned up its direct expressions of anti-US bias that was obvious in the early days of the website - at least in the English language pages. Also, Green Korea has been made up of many local branches with some amount of autonomy, and the main Seoul centered leaders have become more sophisticated. In the early days, the focus was totally on USFK, but it has branched out to cover environmental problems in greater Korea, but still, you do not find the kind of focus on major Chaebol and specific cases against them driven home again and again. And you don't see the kinds of protests against Korean based companies and the Korean military like the Camp Eagle, Long, and other USFK bases have witnessed.)

USFK responded quickly to the claims by Green Korea and the Wonju city government.

U.S. Forces Korea officials spent three hours Thursday at this tiny camp explaining the system for handling waste aviation fuel to officials from the South Korean Environmental Ministry, nearby Wonju City and the Korean press.

On Wednesday, Maj. Andy Knights, 19th Theater Support Command base operations officer, took the officials to the culvert and showed them that what appeared to be leaking oil in the Green Korea United photograph actually was algae.

He also showed the group how fuel and water is separated, with the oil being stored in a holding tank. The water then is processed at the camp¡¯s purification station.

Knights showed the group how water that spills from the pumping station, which operates the separator, flows through a drain into a large concrete box called a sand pit. Sand in the pit is removed and disposed of by a Korean contractor. The contractor also disposes of waste fuel.

"It¡¯s the responsibility of the contractor," he said, "to ensure that the contaminated soil and the waste fuel is properly disposed of according to Korean law.

Green Korea was able to control the discussion in Korean society, and its use of a picture of the simply concrete box as a sign of USFKs disregard for Korea.

Here is another Stars and Stripes article dealing with some of Green Korea's evidence:

[He said the charges are based on photos of an empty concrete box that the group claims is proof that waste aviation fuel is not properly treated.

"The concrete boxes are secondary containment systems to capture any fuel that might leak from the fuel tanks," DeSoto said. "The fuel tanks and containment vaults are being purged, cleaned out and sandblasted as part of a $1 million project to upgrade fuel facilities at Camp Eagle."

Green Korea United charged that there are no oil-water separators at the camp. DeSoto countered that there are, but they have not been in use since the upgrade began. He said the project includes replacing the current separators and installing vapor monitors and alarms to warn of leaks.

"What happened here is that several months ago, USFK identified an environmental need and allocated the necessary resources to fix it," DeSoto said.]

The information by USFK did quiet the Wonju city officials. They were reported as having no comment on the Camp Eagle fuel claim in the days after the briefing.

Green Korea kept up the attack and you can find it on their website, but by this time, they had hit pay dirt, literally, at the second US base in Wonju.