Subic Bay (Philippines), Contamination at the Closure of a Naval Port and Its Conversion to a Commercial Port

Subic Bay was the site of a major US naval facility with a ship repair facility, fuel storage and a power plant. The base closed in 1992, and the area is now the Subic Bay Freeport Zone, administered by the Subic Bay Metropolitan Authority (SBMA). Its Seaport Department oversees vessel and cargo movements and container terminal operations (SBMA, n.d.). The case shows what happens when a port facility changes hands without a contaminated land assessment or agreed cleanup obligations.

Approach

Contamination sources identified before closure. In January 1992, the US General Accounting Office (GAO) reported several problems at the Subic Bay facility (GAO, 1992, pp. 27-28):

lead and other heavy metals from the ship repair facility's sandblasting site drained into the bay or were buried in the landfill;

• underground storage tanks had no leak detection;
• fire-fighting areas had no drainage;
• the power plant held unknown quantities of PCBs;
• only about 26 percent of sewage was treated.

No baseline testing. GAO noted that no soil and water testing had been carried out in the contaminated areas, so the extent of the damage was not known. Proposed cleanup projects, estimated at about US$16 million, had not been funded as of May 1991 (GAO, 1992, pp. 27-28).

Cleanup obligations not defined. The Military Bases Agreement in force at the time set no clear environmental responsibility. The United States was not required to return the bases in their original condition (GAO, 1992, p. 29).

Sites identified after handover. Pure Earth later worked on the former Clark and Subic Bay bases with local partners. It identified 14 contaminated sites and 12 potentially contaminated sites at Subic Bay (Pure Earth, n.d.).

Landfill rehabilitation. A Japanese ODA loan to SBMA, signed in 1997, rehabilitated landfills in the Freeport and Olongapo City and raised garbage collection capacity from about 24 to about 120 tonnes a day (JICA, n.d.).

Results

The former naval port now operates as a commercial port and freeport (SBMA, n.d.). The sources reviewed document how the contamination was identified and how the landfills were rehabilitated. They do not document a full, site-wide assessment and remediation of soil and groundwater, so the extent and current status of contamination cannot be confirmed from them.