Gulfport Naval Construction Battalion Center

Base Background

Naval Construction Battalion Center Gulfport was established in June 1942 on the Mississippi Gulf Coast as a home base for the Seabees, the Navy’s construction battalions. The Navy consolidated the installation’s activities under a single command in 1952, and it has operated as NCBC Gulfport ever since. The roughly 1,100-acre base sits within the city of Gulfport in Harrison County, about halfway between New Orleans and Mobile, and supports the Naval Construction Training Center, the 22nd Naval Construction Regiment, several Naval Mobile Construction Battalions, and dozens of other tenant commands preparing Seabees for deployment.

Toxic Exposure at NCBC Gulfport

Decades of construction, storage, and disposal operations at NCBC Gulfport have left a documented record of contamination across the installation, from a large-scale Agent Orange storage site to a series of legacy landfills still under long-term monitoring.

Agent Orange

Between 1968 and 1977, the U.S. Air Force stored roughly 850,000 gallons of Herbicide Orange, better known as Agent Orange, in 55-gallon drums at a 31-acre site on NCBC Gulfport under a cooperative agreement with the Navy. Spills and leaks from the drums released dioxin (2,3,7,8-TCDD) into the soil, and the contamination later migrated through the base’s drainage ditches into off-site swampland and other nearby low-lying areas. Some of that migration reached areas within the Gulfport-Biloxi community; Biloxi, a neighboring city in Harrison County, sits about seven miles east of the base.

The Air Force removed the remaining herbicide drums in 1977, shipping the leftover Herbicide Orange to the incineration ship Vulcanus for disposal, and conducted a soil incineration cleanup from 1985 to 1987. The Air Force later found two additional contaminated storage areas nearby, and the Navy completed a full remediation of the original site in January 2007. Long-term groundwater and soil monitoring is ongoing.

Despite being a documented Agent Orange site, the Gulfport base is not on VA’s list of presumptive locations, so a disability claim needs solid medical and exposure evidence connecting a diagnosis to time spent there. If the VA denied your Agent Orange claim, our VA disability lawyers may be able to help.

PFAS

NCBC Gulfport is one of hundreds of Navy and National Guard installations nationwide undergoing the Department of Defense’s ongoing assessment of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), tied to decades of aqueous film-forming foam use in firefighting training across the military. A remedial investigation is underway.

Other Exposures

Beyond the herbicide site, nine other contamination sites were identified at NCBC Gulfport, most tied to landfills and industrial operations dating back to World War II. Investigators have found tetrachloroethene, dieldrin, and metals in groundwater at a former disaster-recovery landfill, and arsenic, iron, and carcinogenic polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons in soil and groundwater at two other World War II-era landfills. A landfill later used as the base golf course turned up dioxins alongside lead, polychlorinated biphenyls, and pesticides in its soil, groundwater, and sediment. A former lumber yard also yielded buried, leaking drums of coal distillate and creosote, with naphthalene and carbazole later found in the surrounding groundwater.

If you lived, worked, or served at NCBC Gulfport and later developed a condition linked to any of these toxins, you may be eligible for compensation. Get a free case evaluation here to explore your legal options.