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Local utilities, the Defense Department and some in the Department of Veterans Affairs insist Fort Ord’s water is safe and always has been.īut the VA’s own hazardous materials exposure website, along with scientists and doctors, agree that dangers do exist for military personnel exposed to contaminants. Indeed, the concentrations of the toxics are tiny, measured in parts per billion or trillion, far below the levels of an immediate poisoning. There is rarely a way to directly connect toxic exposure to a specific individual’s medical condition. The AP also reviewed thousands of pages of documents, and interviewed military, medical and environmental scientists. The Associated Press interviewed nearly two dozen of these veterans for this story and identified many more. Soon, the group grew to hundreds of people who had lived or served at Fort Ord and were concerned that their health problems might be tied to the chemicals there. Included in that pollution were dozens of chemicals, some now known to cause cancer, found in the base’s drinking water and soil.ĭecades later, several Fort Ord veterans who were diagnosed with cancers - especially rare blood disorders - took the question to Facebook: Are there more of us? Army base didn’t question whether their tap water was safe to drink.īut in 1990, four years before it began the process of closing as an active military training base, Fort Ord was added to the Environmental Protection Agency’s list of the most polluted places in the nation. Through the years, soldiers and civilians who lived at the U.S.

When it rained, poisons percolated into aquifers from which they drew drinking water.

Recruits tossed live grenades into the canyons of “Mortar Alley,” sprayed soapy chemicals on burn pits of scrap metal and solvents, poured toxic substances down drains and into leaky tanks they buried underground. (AP) - For nearly 80 years, recruits reporting to central California’s Fort Ord considered themselves the lucky ones, privileged to live and work amid sparkling seas, sandy dunes and sage-covered hills.īut there was an underside, the dirty work of soldiering.