Fort Ord in the News
Depleted Uranium and other radioactive materials were used at Fort Ord
Military Poisons, Feb 27, 2025
A 1994 report by the U.S. Army Center for Health Promotion and Preventive Medicine, Industrial Radiation Historical Data Review, reveals the Army used and stored depleted uranium munitions at Fort Ord. The obscure document details the use of ten different types of radioactive materials on Fort Ord.
The Department of Veterans Affairs and the Department of Defense ignore Veterans and their dependents sickened by Agent Orange.
Military Poisons, Feb 10, 2025
The DOD’s Pest Management Control Board has taken authority from the VA, leaving the process to screen and treat sick veterans and their dependents in disarray. The exposure, denial, and resulting death and suffering are evident at the Army’s Fort Ord in California.
Agent Orange is still killing a lot of people, here and overseas.
List of military bases in the US where the use of Agent Orange has been documented but the DOD and VA have not recognized exposure to Agent Orange Military Poisons, Dec. 24, 2024
The DOD and the VA rely on the work of Dr. Alvin Young who claims there were two varieties of Agent Orange: tactical and commercial. The Army’s go-to scientist says the tactical variety used in Vietnam was not the same as the weaker commercial varieties that were used on bases across the U.S. Read the accounts by veterans with various diseases and cancers attributed to Agent Orange claiming exposure to Agent Orange at nearly 100 bases in the U.S. The VA denies claims by asserting that “Agent Orange” was never used at bases like Fort Ord across the U.S.
From a reject VA Appeal - Peripheral neuropathy is considered a presumptive condition for veterans exposed to Agent Orange. In this case, the veteran was denied, even though he clearly demonstrated that he was exposed to Agent Orange.
The deadly herbicide is made up of a 50:50 mixture of 2,4-D and 2,4,5-T. The 2,4,5-T contains deadly dioxin. The Army’s record shows they sprayed different combinations of the two compounds, including 2,4,5-T alone. This means some of the spraying done at Fort Ord was far more toxic than the Agent Orange used in Vietnam.
Developing the former Fort Ord remains a tricky proposition, as Seaside has long realized, Monterey County Now, Dec 4, 2024
In 2017, the City Council approved entering into a purchase and sale agreement with the Bakewell Company, a developer who proposed a massive project called Campus Town, which envisions 1,485 housing units and more than 150,000 square feet of commercial space on 122 acres.
The council approved that project in 2020, but a shovel has yet to break ground. Why? At least in part, it’s because of lead toxicity in the soil. (Lead toxicity is one part of the story..)
Image shows artist’s rendition of Campus Town - Monterey County News
VA rejects evidence Agent Orange was used at Fort Ord, leaving ill veterans without aid, Monterey County Now, July 18, 2024
Documents were discovered, including one found by the chemical engineer using her knowledge of toxins. Records show Agent Orange was used at Fort Ord until at least 1973, with unused portions stored for years afterward. One reported that 80,000 pounds of combined herbicides were used per year.
The team published a paper in early April, “Evidence of toxic herbicide including Agent Orange at Fort Ord, CA,” and submitted it to the VA, which simultaneous to their work was deciding which U.S. bases to include on a list of those that used Agent Orange in order to consider veterans’ claims for medical care. The VA comment period closed on April 12. Less than a month later, the new list was published – and Fort Ord wasn’t on it.
“We didn’t understand because we gave them all the proof,” Akey says. “We were very frustrated with that. I don’t know what else we could give them to be added to the list.”
Evidence of Agent Orange at Fort Ord, Military Poisons, April 5, 2024
Two generations of soldiers and sailors have been exposed to the military’s reckless use of Agent Orange at nearly a hundred military bases in the United States. Many have suffered and died while the Veterans Administration has summarily rejected their claims. Nowhere is the exposure, denial, and resulting death and suffering more apparent than the Army’s Fort Ord in California.
The use of Agent Orange has been documented at Fort Ord and a hundred other bases in the U.S. The VA and the DOD have not recognized presumptive exposure to Agent Orange at these locations. This means the federal government can reject claims from sickened service members by simply denying the deadly herbicides were ever used on base.
If enough Fort Ord veterans and others across the country and around the world use the evidence we have presented, it is possible that we can change the policy of the DOD and the VA.
Fort Ord: Agent Orange contamination, trails have grenades, VeteranLife.com, 2024.
Visitors at Fort Ord are being warned of potential dangers from grenades and explosives found near unauthorized trails. All of this while Veterans await new developments on a study involving potential exposure to toxic materials while serving. The ongoing cleanup operation aims to remove hazardous items such as artillery projectiles and bombs, to make the Fort Ord dunes trail paths safer. Failure to abide by the trail guidelines can lead to obvious health hazards and may also result in legal issues for anyone guilty of committing a violation.
Millions of Vets got health care under the PACT Act. Thousands left out want the same chance Military.com, Dec 19, 2023
The list of exposures and illnesses among former military personnel seems endless: firefighters with testicular cancer linked to the foam used by the Defense Department; military aviation crews with higher rates of brain and nervous system cancers than is normal; missileers with non-Hodgkin lymphoma; female troops with a 40% higher chance of developing breast cancer than their civilian counterparts; and post-9/11 veterans with twice the diagnosis rate of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS, than the general population.
VA awards 100% disability to Fort Ord veteran suffering from colon cancer, citing Military Poisons, Military Poisons, Nov. 9, 2023
VA rating decision letter refers to article on PFAS contamination of groundwater by Military Poisons.
In a surprising and welcome development, the Veterans Administration, (VA) has awarded a Fort Ord veteran a 100% disability compensation rating for colon cancer while citing links to PFAS found on the base.
The VA examiner wrote that the evidence shows that the veteran was diagnosed with colon cancer and that participation in a Toxic Exposure Risk Activity (TERA) is confirmed, based on his verified service in Fort Ord, CA. The VA cited the November 17, 2022 article in Military Poisons - “Concentrations of PFAS in groundwater at Fort Ord are more than 20,000 times over EPA limit.”
On August 16, 2022, Julie Akey, a past resident of Fort Ord, California, sent a petition request to the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, Office of Community Health and Hazard Assessment, (ATSDR).
Akey asked ATSDR to re-examine contamination and its effects on people stationed at Fort Ord in the 1990’s.
This article will provide an introduction to the chronological record of the correspondence between Ms. Akey and the ATSDR that analyzes the deadly track record of military and governmental obfuscation. It is the first in a series of five segments.
Like most Army bases, Fort Ord is a cauldron of toxic chemical contamination. Hundreds who lived there were sickened and many have died as a result of the contamination. ATSDR, a branch of the Centers for Disease Control, investigated the site in 1996 and concluded that there was “no apparent public health hazard.”
Decades later closed military bases remain a toxic menace New York Times, Sep. 27, 2023
Cities hoped for new businesses and housing on former military sites. But many are still waiting for poisonous pollution to be cleaned up, a resolution that for some may never come. For much of the 20th century, Fort Ord was one of the largest light infantry training bases in the country, where more than a million U.S. Army troops were schooled in the lethal skills of firing a mortar and aiming a rifle – discharging thousands of rounds a day into the scenic sand dunes along the coast of central California.
CDC to Conduct Health Study at Polluted Former Army Base, AP, Nov 9, 2022
Federal health officials are conducting a new study to determine whether veterans once stationed at a now-shuttered California military base were exposed to dangerously high levels of cancer-causing toxins.
The decision by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention comes nine months after an Associated Press investigation found that drinking water at Fort Ord contained toxic chemicals and that hundreds of veterans who lived at the central California coast base in the 1980s and 1990s later developed rare and terminal blood cancers.
What Lies Beneath: Vets worry polluted base made them ill, AP, Feb 23, 2022
FORT ORD NATIONAL MONUMENT, Calif. (AP) — For nearly 80 years, recruits reporting to central California’s Fort Ord considered themselves the lucky ones, privileged to live and work amid sparkling seas, sandy dunes and sage-covered hills.
But there was an underside, the dirty work of soldiering. Recruits tossed live grenades into the canyons of “Mortar Alley,” sprayed soapy chemicals on burn pits of scrap metal and solvents, poured toxic substances down drains and into leaky tanks they buried underground.
When it rained, poisons percolated into aquifers from which they drew drinking water.
Through the years, soldiers and civilians who lived at the U.S. Army base didn’t question whether their tap water was safe to drink.
But in 1990, four years before it began the process of closing as an active military training base, Fort Ord was added to the Environmental Protection Agency’s list of the most polluted places in the nation.
Can you help us pay for air and water testing on Fort Ord? We need financial help to take our advocacy to the next level.
