The Titan Site

At a recent City Council meeting, a resident expressed her concerns about the Titan site next to Sun City Lincoln Hills. The resident stated that much of her savings was tied up in her house and she would need to sell it and use the proceeds if the need to move into assisted living became a reality. She expressed fear that issues with the contamination at the Lincoln Titan site would adversely affect the value of her house. I have heard other residents express the same concern. While our chief concern with the site mainly has to do with health, home values seem to be the concern of many in Lincoln Hills. The contamination left over from the formerly-used military site affects so many issues. This contamination includes not only trichlorethylene (TCE), but lead paint and asbestos used in the construction of the enormous underground structure. The structure itself poses questions about its structural integrity since it has been flooded since it was abandoned by the military some 60 years ago. On top of this (literally) is lead contamination from the shooting range used by the Placer County Sheriff's Office and a trap shooting range that deposited tons of lead buckshot and other contaminants over the site. The cleanup of this is the responsibility of the county and the county has pledged that it will clean up the surface lead contamination by the summer of 2024. This brings us back to the TCE contamination. This was caused by the site personnel using the TCEs as a cleaning substance for the missiles and other machinery. Long before the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), such chemicals were routinely dumped in pits and left to be absorbed by the ground. The TCEs contaminate the groundwater and are carried by it through the soil (the plume). TCEs are the major concern with the Camp Lejeune super site. TCE has been known to cause birth defects and Parkinson's disease. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) is responsible for the monitoring of this contamination and any future remediation. They have stated that there is no concern with the drinking water. While this is so since there are no drinking wells in the vicinity, TCE does vaporize and can be drawn into structures through cracks in their foundations and this seems to be the major problem. Several monitoring wells (both water and vapor) have been placed around the site and positive and disturbing readings have been recorded several hundred feet from the original dumping pit close to Sun City. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has stated that the plume is stable. While this depends on your definition of stable, the contamination plume did not start anywhere near where it is currently detected, so it had to migrate via the groundwater. At least, we can say the plume is spreading. So, what do we need to know? We need to know exactly where the contamination has spread. For this, we will need more monitoring wells, both water and vapor, to see exactly where the plume is now. This will mean placing some of these wells either close to or in Sun City. We also need to know when the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers will remove the millions of gallons of water from inside the facility. This water has apparently been contaminated with asbestos, lead from paint and other chemicals used to lubricate machinery. We need to know if all the chemical holding tanks used at the site have been removed and if not, when they will be removed. During operation, these tanks contained such chemicals as ethylene glycol, nitrolic acid, sulfuric acid, hydrochloric acid and other chemicals. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers gave a presentation at a City Council open meeting on April 25. Although they presented their current status of the Titan site, questions posed by residents were not addressed and many residents were disappointed by the lack of answers. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has agreed to return to Lincoln on May 31 at 4 p.m. and make another presentation to the community at the Orchard Creek Lodge. Our hope is that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers will answer the questions at this meeting that went unanswered at the City Council meeting. William Lauritsen is a Sun City resident and retired member of the U.S. Foreign Service (State Department) where he served as a finance officer spending most of his career overseas. He has an MBA and is a retired CPA. He is chair of the Lincoln Titan 1-A Missile Site Environmental Contamination and Remediation Committee and also an elected member of the Lincoln City Council. This opinion represents only his personal, and not elected, opinion. The column's goal is to present issues that impact city residents in an impartial and understandable format. He can be reached at bill@billforlincoln.com.