tfED ST/,,. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency 20-E-0169 | ^ Hffirp nf ln«nprtnr f^pripral May 2020 • U • O ¦ ^ 11V11 vl IIIIUII Id I I I U ICUll \ Office of Inspector General At a Glance Why We Did This Project We conducted this evaluation to determine whether the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Superfund institutional controls achieved their stated goal of preventing human exposure at Superfund sites. This report focuses on our evaluation of Fort Ord, a 28,000-acre Superfund site in California that was a former Army base. Future reports will describe our evaluations of institutional controls at other Superfund sites. We selected Fort Ord because of the human health risk of potential exposure to unexploded munitions. Also, the 2017 Five-Year Review of Fort Ord stated that trespassing was an ongoing issue at the site. We reviewed a sample of the institutional controls in place at Fort Ord—fencing and signage—to deter trespassing and protect human health from explosive constituents and other contaminants. EPA Oversight Provided Reasonable Controls to Deter and Minimize Trespassing at the Fort Ord Superfund Site What We Found During our site visit, we found that the EPA, the U.S. Army, and other organizations use fencing and signage as institutional controls at Fort Ord to deter and minimize illegal trespassing and to be protective of human health. The Army and the EPA have not deemed Fort Ord protective of human health and the environment due to the projected amount of munitions cleanup and the estimated time it could take to complete that cleanup. The steps taken by the Army with EPA oversight, combined with planned follow-up actions moving forward, represent a reasonable effort to deter and minimize trespassing. After Fort Ord was closed in 1994, use of off-road transit in the property was restricted to authorized personnel unless otherwise posted. Despite the site's restricted access, trespassing continues. The Presidio of Monterey Police have documented trespassing incidents since 1997. During our site visit, we verified that the fencing and gates were clearly marked with signs indicating the danger in the area and that entry was not allowed. In addition, although trespassing is a recurring problem at the site, we verified that the integrity of the fencing and gates was not compromised and that secured areas were not breached. For the institutional controls we sampled at the time of our site visit, the steps taken by the Army with EPA oversight, combined with planned follow-up actions moving forward, represent a reasonable effort to deter and minimize trespassing and prevent people from being exposed to unexploded munitions and chemical soil contamination. We make no recommendations in this report. This report addresses the following: • Cleaning up and revitalizing land. Address inquiries to our public affairs office at (202) 566-2391 or OIG WEBPOSTINGS@epa.gov. List of OIG reports. ------- |