PCB CONTAMINATION Creation of advisory board sought

Division of Environmental Quality Director Ike Cabrera has asked the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to immediately establish a Restoration Advisory Board that will pave the way for the hiring of a technical expert who will help deal with the issue involving the contamination of cancer-causing polychlorinated biphenyls.

Under the policy of the Department of Defense, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers must set up an RAB in every Formerly Used Defense Site. Each RAB is entitled to receive $25,000 or more for technical assistance. The community will be able to hire a technical expert of their own choice to conduct an independent study and evaluate what the U.S. Army Corps has done so far to clean up the area.

In a letter to Raymond Jyo, deputy district engineer for Program and Project and Management of DOD, Cabrera said the advisory board will allow community members who are the stakeholders to have a voice and actively participate in the decision-making related to their village’s restoration.

The RAB will be composed of DEQ, Honolulu Army Corps and the Historic Preservation Office as standing members. Community members in Tanapag village can sit in the RAB so that they can voice out their concern on certain issues and be kept abreast of the development.

PCB and dioxin contamination spread in Tanapag village when an unknown number of electrical capacitors containing 100 percent PCB oil were left by the U.S. military in the 1960s.

PCBs are a group of manufactured organic chemicals that contain 209 individual chlorinated chemicals (known as congeners). They have been used widely as coolants and lubricants in transformers, capacitors and other electrical equipment.

Manufacturing of PCB was stopped in the United States in 1977 because of evidences pointing to its harmful effects on the environment and people’s health.

Experiments conducted on animals show that PCBs caused cancer as well as affected their immune, reproductive, nervous and endocrine systems. Studies in humans have raised further concerns regarding the cancer-causing potential of PCBs.

DEQ was only notified about the presence of these ceramic PCB capacitors in 1988. Residents had used these electrical capacitors in the village as boundary markers, road blocks for driveways, windbreaks for barbecue sites and headstones after they were abandoned by the US military. Others used the inner phenolic linings of the capacitors as rooftop decorations.