Vial Dumpers May Be Prosecuted

Orange County officials Thursday were investigating legal avenues for prosecution of the Navy or its contractors for allegedly dumping vials of antiseptic used in biological warfare in the ocean off the county’s beaches.

Navy officials in San Diego continued to maintain that the vials probably are Defense Department materials but could have been dumped by any number of military agencies or contractors and not necessarily by a Navy ship.

However, John J. Hills, a hazardous materials expert for the Orange County Health Care Agency, said that beach-goers on Wednesday in Laguna Beach recovered a page from a manual stamped with the legend, Department of the Navy Sea Systems Command.

“We’re trying to see if we can initiate enforcement action,” Hills said.

“The message that we want to send out to everyone, whether it be the military or any other business, is that wastes such as these should be disposed of properly,” he said. “No one in Orange County should be subjected to having these wastes showing up either in a vacant lot or on the beach. The message is, first, let’s get these wastes cleaned up. And the second message is: we don’t want this to happen again.”

Also Thursday, a Navy team from Long Beach requested samples of the vials so that it can attempt to trace their source through the military supply system, according to Cmdr. Ron Wildermuth, a Navy spokesman in San Diego.

But Hills said Orange County officials won’t be willing to hand over the waste materials until next week.

Since Monday, he said, the Orange County coastline stretching from Seal Beach to San Clemente has been littered with an assortment of waste materials:

- 70 plastic vials of antiseptic used as a defense in case of biological or chemical warfare.

- 20 vials containing an injectable “Ringer” solution used to treat shock.

- 12 vials of an injectable chemical, protopam chloride, used to counteract organic phosphorus.

- Several vials of military-issue tetracycline.

- A container of aircraft-cleaning compound.

- A military-issue waterproof flashlight.

- A waterproof bag.

- An expended flare.

- The plastic cover of a technical manual stamped Department of the Navy Sea Systems Command and marked Peculiar Support Equipment for CIWS MK 15 (PHALANX).

Meanwhile, Navy officials confirmed Thursday that they had tightened their ocean-dumping policy on Oct. 31 after medical waste, apparently from their ships, turned up on beaches in North Carolina, South Carolina and Florida.

The new policy, issued by Adm. Carlisle A.H. Trost, chief of naval operations, prohibits dumping of all medical waste at sea unless that waste poses “an infectious hazard to men on board.”

In such an instance--and that should be rare, Navy spokeswoman Lt. Janet Mescus said--the medical waste must be sterilized, logged in, bagged properly and then dumped at least 50 miles from shore.

Under the old guidelines, Mescus said, some medical supplies such as syringes or cotton balls could be disposed of 25 miles from shore with regular Navy trash and did not have to be carefully logged in.

In San Diego on Thursday, Navy officials were working with county health investigators to find the source of medical waste that washed ashore at Point Loma.

Cmdr. Wildermuth said three bags used to hold intravenous solutions had been traced by lot number and proved to be Defense Department bags. However, Wildermuth said he could not say if the bags came from a Navy ship, a veterans hospital or a civilian hospital with a Navy contract.