City leaders are pleading for more help from the state and federal government to support cleanup efforts in the fallout from the massive hangar fire that broke out almost a month ago at the closed Marine Corps Air Station Tustin.
“We need the Navy to not only step up in terms of funding, but in terms of actively leading the recovery effort,” Mayor Austin Lumbard said Tuesday. “The city has filled the void in the interim, but now that the fire is extinguished, we’re really looking for the Navy to take ownership of their property and their recovery leadership.”
Officials said the city has depleted what it could take from its reserves to fund asbestos testing and cleanup in the public and residential areas surrounding the burnt northern hangar and are counting on other government agencies to step up.
Cleanup costs are expected to be in the tens of millions for addressing in the surrounding neighborhoods. Lumbard called the $1 million the Navy committed early on “grossly insufficient.”
Navy officials on Wednesday said the service has been working with the city since day one of the fire and in no way is shirking its responsibilities or its share of funding.
“We are working on an amendment to an agreement to provide additional funding,” said Chris Dunne, a Navy spokesman. “We knew the $1 million wasn’t going to do it. The Navy fully intends to support what the city is doing and fund that to the fullest amount we can.”
Dunne acknowledged that setting up the funding agreement has taken weeks, but expects more money to make its way to the city in days. Officials are now figuring out the Navy’s financial responsibility and what will be covered, he said.
“It’s just one of those tedious processes of getting the language just right and trying to remember through this whole process that we’re talking about people and the community and taking care of people and not getting too bogged down in process at a time when the help is needed,”…
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