Cole Keller - Fort Ord: Closure and Reuse
Cole Keller
Professor Biggs
HIST 197
3/10/21
Fort Ord: Closure and Reuse
Introduction
The Monterey Peninsula is one of the single most beautiful places in the world, from the cliffs of Big Sur to the towering dunes of Marina, the peninsula will always find a way to take your breath away. However, driving by Marina and Seaside on the iconic Pacific Coast Highway, one cannot help but notice the scores of dilapidated buildings rotting away beside you. Those familiar with Monterey’s story know all too well what these buildings are; Fort Ord. This blight on the landscape used to be the life of the Peninsula, pumping money into the economy and giving back to the community at large. So the question remains, why would something previously so beneficial be left the wayside? This is a question that many towns faced with BRAC, Base Realignment And Closure, were forced to reconcile. The fact was that Fort Ord was one of many bases closed in the Post Cold-War era, where tensions finally appeared to be subsiding with the old enemy of what had become Russia. The base was opened in 1917 after purchasing the land from a family of German Immigrants, from whom it derived its first name “Camp Gigling.” After it was renamed to Fort Ord, the base would go on to serve as a training ground for infantry and artillery, with the thousands of acres available on the property perfect for such operations. The base would go onto close in 1994, leaving a hole in the community that has not been filled to this day. This essay will examine exactly what the base closure meant both to the community and environment, specifically that of the cities of Marina and Seaside.
Research
Researching this project turned out to be more of a chore than previously conceived. With the ongoing pandemic, many libraries had been closed to the public and the financial crisis that ensued during said pandemic forced the Fort Ord Reuse Authority to close its doors permanently. On top of this, much of what you will find in scholarly search engines like Google Scholar and the UCR Library about Fort Ord were yearbooks. While these sources certainly were interesting, they were not useful for this essay besides for images. There ended up being several changes in the topic as research continued, all centered around Fort Ord, before finally landing on that of it’s closure and reuse. A lot of what was found to be usable for sources are government documents and websites; with documents ranging from local governments like the Marina Coast Water District to those of the federal government with Congressional hearings on the closure and community. There were also studies done to look at both the impact on the community and the environment, most of which were funded by the government. There is a clear bias in many of these documents, as the government is essentially looking at themselves, so the final major portion of research was done through newspaper articles. Newspapers like Monterey County Weekly had many articles available on the closure of the base and it’s cleanup, giving the issue what seemed to be a fair assessment.
Historical and Image Analysis
The first and arguably most important issue is that of the environmental impact. As Fort Ord was a military base, there were many environmental impacts from the base alongside it’s closure that resulted in it becoming an EPA Superfund Site. The most glaring issue to the peninsula at large is that of groundwater contamination. This is especially an issue due to the sandy soil the base sits on. When it rains, it washes down any chemicals that may have been left behind from actions like firefighting drills or regular vehicle maintenance into the aquifer. The effects of which are especially seen in the upper 180 foot aquifer, as pictured below, which was previously used for drinking water and farming before all pumping for use had been ceased.
Pictured above is the cross section of the Fort Ord Aquifers. This image shows how the contaminated upper 180 foot aquifer runs into Salinas, which is responsible for much of the nation's agricultrue and it had previously used this aquifer. The Lower 180 foot aquifer has been deemed safe for use and is the primary water source for much of the peninsula.
The chemicals that have been found to be in the groundwater include Trichloroethylene, Perfluorooctanoic acid and sulfate, Carbon Tetrachloride, and Tetrachloroethylene. These chemicals have been proven to be harmful to the human body, for instance Trichloroethylene has been known to cause cancer with prolonged exposure. It is important to note that there has been success in cleaning up the toxins in the groundwater through soil vapor extraction and the biodegradation methods of cleanup. Currently, there are acceptable levels of toxic contaminants found in the drinking water supplied to the communities on and around the former base. In order to meet their demand for the planned development of the former base and peninsula, it requires 9300-acre feet per year of aquifer, so water remains in short supply as only 6600 AFY is available.
Pictured above is a diagram showing the process of Soil Vapor Extraction. The general process of what takes place is that air is drawn through contaminated soil in order to mix with contaminated vapors and be brought up through a well. The contaminated vapor is treated then released.
One of the few good things to come from the closure of the base is the setting aside of land both for public recreation and natural protection. After the base closed, this was accomplished in two ways: the establishment of a nature reserve and declaring parts of Fort Ord a National Monument. The National Monument was established in 2012 and had much more land put aside as compared to the nature reserve, with 14658 acres being set aside for the Bureau of Land Management. Most of the land is set aside for habitats and is inaccessible to the average visitor, however there are trails for visitors to enjoy the beauty of the former base. The establishment of the nature reserve took place in 1996, when 600 acres were put aside for education and preservation purposes. There are six listed species of animal, including the federally endangered Smith’s Blue Butterfly, and eleven listed plant species, including the federally endangered Monterey Spineflower.
Pictured above is an example of a Monterey Spineflower, just one example of 17 species of plants and animals that are listed as threatened or endangered living on both the Fort Ord Reserve and National Monument.
An issue that affects both the environment and community is that of the 1600 blighted buildings and infrastructure littering the landscape. The Barracks are particularly a concern as they contain toxins like lead paint, asbestos, and polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB). Both asbestos and PCB are known to cause cancer and lead is also known to have major health effects, particularly in children and pregnant women. Initial estimates assume that total demolition costs would be between 65 and 70 million dollars, and that financial burden was expected to fall mostly upon the community rather than the military or federal government. In spite of this cost, Seaside was so desperate for housing they were waiting for the US Army to grant the city access to the former Hayes military housing in order to bring much needed cash flow into the city as of the congressional hearing in August of 2001. The buildings would eventually be demolished, but there were plans for single family homes to be constructed in order for the city to achieve its financial goals.
Pictured above are some of the blighted buildings and dilapidated infrastructure that has been deemed unsafe in terms of the buildings and unusable in the case of the infrastructure. These are just a few of the many buildings that exist like this to this day, a visual representation of what was left behind after years of neglect.
Another community impact felt through the base's closure is the problem of unexploded ordnance. In the beginning, it was difficult to find consensus on how things should be done. The US Army Corps of Engineers wanted to do scheduled burns in order to more easily access the munitions hidden under the foliage, and were supported by the Fish and Wildlife Service in their habitat management efforts, but the EPA and Air Board blocked these initial attempts for their own concerns about air quality. Fortunately, the US Army was able to organize a Strategic Management Analysis Requirements and Technology (SMART) team to help agencies find consensus. It was through this that the system of 100-acre scheduled burns was created in order to find the bombs and continues to be implemented to this day. However, this poses two main problems, the first of which is that the land is unusable for development which the cities of Marina and Seaside desperately want. The second issue is there have been accidents where lives were lost. In a congressional hearing, Mayor Jerry Smith of Seaside recalls an event years prior involving two young children who trespassed onto the base. They stepped on an unexploded grenade, killing one of the children and causing the other to lose his legs. The ordinance also leaves behind an environmental issue, with chemicals like HMX being left behind as residue. Some crops, like tomatoes, have no uptake of the explosive chemical, whereas lettuce has been found to uptake as much as 43 mg/kg. Despite this data, the full effects of HMX on the environment are not well understood.
Pictured above is an Unexploded Ordnance Safety Officer showing what kinds of ordnance has been detonated and what will be detonated for the local media in 2018.
The final effects that the bases closure had on the communities can be summarized by two points; that of its size and economy. Monterey County is broken up into two main populations; Salinas and the Monterey Peninsula. The effect of the closure was highly localized to the Peninsula due to the location of much of the base along the coastline. When looking at the data, excluding Salinas, the effects are clear. Economically, they saw a roughly 9% increase in the vacancy rate and 4% decrease in retail sales alongside a steady decline in housing prices after the announcement of the bases closure in 1991. The Population also declined roughly 11% and K-12 enrollment was most severely affected with a 27% drop after the closure. This is where Fort Ord Reuse Authority (FORA) stepped in and drew up plans for development. They set lofty goals for the former base and sought to encourage economic development, especially after 4500 civilian jobs were lost after the base’s closure. The first plan set to be built and operational on the former base was a university; California State University Monterey Bay, which was opened in 1995 on 1350 acres. The projected growth of the area was expected to have a population of 37000, 18000 jobs, 11000 housing units, and 3 million square-feet of commercial space by 2015, making the goal of 17000 students on campus by 2007 seem like a reasonable projection. Only 7634 students are currently enrolled at CSUMB, a full fourteen years after they expected to have 17000. This was only the first of many failures of FORA’s projection. In 2013, the goals set to be achieved by 2015 were unachievable. There were 12500 people living there, 3799 jobs, 4476 housing units, and 660000 square-feet of commercial space. The main cause of the problem was funding. Money was so tight that, unfortunately, the 2020 financial crisis forced FORA to close permanently and they put any remaining funds aside for the sole purpose of demolishing the blighted buildings.
Pictured above is a picture of part of CSUMB’s campus, which is continued to be expanded to this day as the campus has roughly two-thirds of the plans for its development completed.
Conclusion
The Monterey Peninsula is one of the most beautiful places in the world, and it was lucky to come out of this base closure as well as it did. There were lots of negative trends to look at in the raw data for how Fort Ord’s cleanup and reuse was going. However, the fact stands that there was at least some recovery in the area. A plethora of agencies, both those of the government and those of the community, have worked tirelessly to prepare the thousands of acres for the next steps in its use. There is a lot of hope in the potential of Fort Ord, even with the setbacks and overly ambitious projections. The closure of the base most certainly affected the Peninsula negatively, the civilian jobs lost by the bases closure had not recovered by 2013 as previously discussed. The money and population that was brought into the peninsula by those men and women in uniform serving at Fort Ord could not be understated. The base’s closure absolutely affected the Monterey Peninsula both environmentally and economically. The cities of Seaside and Marina were especially affected, and those effects can be felt to this day. That all being said, there has been progress that continues to provide hope for the communities most affected by this BRAC closure of Fort Ord.
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