Naval Station Vieques and Camp Garcia

Base Background

The Navy began acquiring land on Vieques, an island off Puerto Rico’s east coast, in 1941, eventually controlling roughly two-thirds of the island under two commands: the Naval Ammunition Support Detachment on the western end, used for ammunition storage and support facilities, and the Vieques Naval Training Range on the eastern end, which included the Atlantic Fleet Weapons Training Facility and the Marine Corps and Navy personnel camp known as Camp García.

For six decades the range served as the Atlantic Fleet’s principal live-fire training ground for naval gunfire support, air-to-ground bombing, and Marine amphibious landings, and it hosted NATO training exercises as well. Following sustained public protests after a 1999 bombing accident killed a civilian security guard, the Navy ended live-fire training in 2001 and all training activity on Vieques in 2003.

Toxic Exposure at the Vieques Base

Sailors, Marines, and civilian support workers who trained or worked at Camp García, the Live Impact Area, or the former Naval Ammunition Support Detachment between 1941 and 2003 encountered a range of documented contamination that the Navy, EPA, and the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry have investigated since operations ended.

The heaviest metal contamination sits in soil at the roughly 900-acre Live Impact Area, the range’s bombing target zone, while petroleum, solvent, and perchlorate contamination turned up separately at fuel, maintenance, and munitions-disposal sites closer to Camp García and the former ammunition depot. On February 19, 1999, Marine Corps aircraft mistakenly fired 263 rounds of ammunition armed with depleted uranium penetrators onto the Live Impact Area during a training exercise. The Navy recovered 116 of the rounds by August 2002, and a Nuclear Regulatory Commission inspection concluded the depleted uranium had not spread beyond the Live Impact Area.

Some veterans have also claimed exposure to Agent Orange at Vieques, but VA decisions have cited DoD research finding no evidence that herbicide was tested or stored on the island. Learn more about proving Agent Orange exposure in Puerto Rico.

Heavy Metals Contamination

Soil sampling on the Live Impact Area, evaluated by ATSDR in a 2003 public health assessment, found seven metals at concentrations above ATSDR’s health-based comparison values: arsenic (as high as 36 parts per million), cadmium (as high as 31.3 ppm), chromium (as high as 700 ppm), iron (as high as 150,000 ppm), manganese (as high as 5,000 ppm), vanadium (as high as 500 ppm), and lead. Mercury was also detected and evaluated further even without a formal comparison value. ATSDR attributed the elevated levels to six decades of Navy training activity, since rockets, projectiles, bombs, and pyrotechnic devices fired on the range all contain these metals in their components.

Munitions Constituents (TNT and RDX)

A 2022 peer-reviewed study of Bahía Salina del Sur, the bay immediately adjacent to the Live Impact Area, sampled in January and February 2016, found low-level munitions residue in the water column: RDX at roughly a third of the general sampling locations (4 to 12 nanograms per liter) and TNT at one location (10 ng/L). Concentrations were far higher next to a specific breached, unexploded 1,000-pound bomb, where TNT reached 4.5 to 7.5 micrograms per liter along with its breakdown products 2-amino-4,6-dinitrotoluene, 4-amino-2,6-dinitrotoluene, and 2,4-dinitrotoluene. Separately, Navy and ATSDR soil sampling conducted along the range’s western boundary in 1978 and 1999 did not positively identify explosive compounds in soil.

Perchlorate

Perchlorate, a component of rocket motors and pyrotechnic flares, contaminated groundwater beneath SWMU 4, a former open burn and open detonation area at the western end of the ammunition depot used to destroy surplus munitions, fuels, and propellants from 1969 to 1979 and possibly as far back as the late 1940s.

PFAS Contamination

Beginning in 2020, the Navy identified thirteen areas of interest across both the former ammunition depot and the former training range where aqueous film-forming foam or other PFAS-containing materials may have been used, including former fire stations, motor pool areas, and the runway near Camp García. A site inspection completed in December 2023 recommended eight of those areas, including the Camp García runway and a former fire station and motor pool area, for a follow-up remedial investigation to determine whether PFAS has reached groundwater. Find out more about AFFF contamination and VA benefits.

Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs)

A 550-gallon underground storage tank used from 1970 to 1996 at the former ammunition depot’s Public Works Area leaked, contaminating groundwater with benzene, xylene, naphthalene, 2-methylnaphthalene, 1,2-dichloroethane, and the gasoline additive MTBE; the Navy has treated the plume with in-situ chemical oxidation since 2015, and groundwater monitoring continues. Separately, at a former helicopter maintenance and fuel-bladder storage site near Camp García, the Navy found trichloroethylene (TCE) in groundwater above the federal Safe Drinking Water Act Maximum Contaminant Level.

Getting Compensation

Those who trained, served, or worked at Camp García, the Live Impact Area, or the former ammunition depot could have come into contact with these documented substances, and the health effects of the exposure often don’t surface for years or decades. The chart below breaks down the conditions these substances are known to cause.

A veteran who served at the Vieques military base (or their surviving family) can still pursue compensation for a related diagnosis today: Hill & Ponton’s VA-accredited lawyers take these cases on a contingency basis, charging nothing until they win. Start with a free case evaluation to explore your options.