South Side residents want concerns about old base heard

Rally participants are displeased because the group overseeing the cleanup of the former Air Force base was disbanded. Rally participants are displeased because the group overseeing the cleanup of the former Air Force base was disbanded. Photo: Photos By Marvin Pfeiffer / San Antonio Express-News Photo: Photos By Marvin Pfeiffer / San Antonio Express-News Image 1 of / 23 Caption Close South Side residents want concerns about old base heard 1 / 23 Back to Gallery

When doctors diagnosed Victor San Miguel with thyroid cancer 11 years ago, he didn't have to look far to find others who understood what he was facing.

Of the 13 houses on his block of Hollenbeck Avenue — feet from the site of the former Kelly AFB — 11 other residents have either been diagnosed or died from cancer-related disease, the 67-year-old said.

Sixteen years after the Air Force first acknowledged it routinely dumped toxic chemicals at the site and a subsequent $330 million government cleanup effort, San Miguel and his neighbors say they have been left to deal with their poor health on their own and worry about the pollution they fear still remains.

They rallied Saturday outside the gates of Port San Antonio, on the site of the former base, to demand stronger government monitoring of cleanup efforts and protest the disbanding earlier this year of the advisory board charged with overseeing the process.

“Nobody's going to tell me it's no longer contaminated, and nobody's going to tell me they don't know where our sickness is coming from,” said San Miguel to a crowd of about 25 fellow residents. “We all know where it came from.”

City and Air Force officials did not return calls for comment Saturday.

Dozens of studies commissioned by everyone from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and to the city's Metropolitan Health District have tracked elevated rates of cancer and birth defects in the surrounding neighborhood.

Each has failed to establish a direct connection between the Air Force's chemical dumping and the medical maladies faced by many nearby. One much-disparaged 2009 report even suggested the cancer cluster could be blamed on residents' higher-than-average consumption of corn tortillas.

For nearly two decades, the Kelly Air Force Base Restoration Advisory Board, a panel of military representatives, government regulators and community members, oversaw the cleanup effort. In March, with official decontamination projects all but complete, the Air Force shuttered the group.

Residents have had to take their concerns to a long list of functionaries at various government agencies, all who seem eager to shift responsibility to someone else, said Ramiro Acebedo, whose father-in-law, uncle and several aunts all died of cancer in their 50s. His mother-in-law, who lives across the street from the former base, has also experienced a recent decline in health, he said.

Acebedo has tried for months to get someone to listen to his complaints about one of the business park's new tenants, a local airline parts company, and his fear that they are improperly storing heavy equipment on land that may still be contaminated.

“I call code enforcement and they tell me to call the state,” he said. “I call the state and they say it's a code enforcement issue.”

Since Kelly shut down in 2001 and the city began redeveloping the site as Port San Antonio, a hub for aerospace and warehousing companies, the Air Force has led efforts to clean up the mess — a process it described earlier this year as 95 percent complete.

Meanwhile, city and state regulatory agencies maintain they have kept a close watch on potential groundwater contamination and disposal of fuel storage tanks and wastewater treatment.

In a news release marking the disbanding of the advisory board earlier this year, military officials said they planned to remain involved in cleanup efforts.

“The bottom line is we are not going anywhere,” said Kelly Paul Carroll, an Air Force environmental coordinator. We “will continue to be proactive in our approach to sharing information about Kelly's cleanup program.”

Diana Lopez, an environmental activist who grew up near the base, believes the site has become such an economic boon that officials aren't eager to admit that problems may still persist. Since the Air Force completed the transfer of the former base to Port San Antonio in 2010, the venture has attracted 70 businesses to the area with an estimated economic impact of $4 billion annually.

“It's obvious they want the cleanup to be over,” she said. “Who wants to advertise a business park on top of a potentially contaminated site?”

San Miguel, who spoke of his cancer diagnosis Saturday, said he and his neighbors don't plan on quieting down anytime soon.

“I may not be here too much longer,” he said. “But I'll die gladly if I know someone will continue the fight.”

jroebuck@express-news.net

Twitter: @jeremyrroebuck