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Don’t get pregnant at George Air Force Base’” was the advice imparted from one female Air Force member to another in 1975 at that base, located 100+ miles north of San Diego and used as an active military site from 1941–1992. From the start of their service at George AFB, both parties to this conversation came to be familiar with the shared horror stories of repeated infections, vaginal bleeding, ovarian cysts, uterine tumors, birth defects, and miscarriages among female Air Force members at the site.

It was early July 1988 when Rennie Auiler, the 28-year-old wife of an airman, sat in a hospital examination room at George Air Force Base waiting for a routine checkup.

Having given birth six weeks earlier to a premature 6-pound girl following a difficult pregnancy marked by acute morning sickness, she sought assurance from her physician that her next baby would come easier.

Instead, the prognosis stunned her.

Last month, ICE transferred 1,000 undocumented immigrants to the Victorville Federal Correctional Complex in Southern California.  FCI Victorville is built on a Superfund site [George Air Force Base], and according to the Lahontan Regional Water Quality Board, industrial solvents like trichloroethylene, pesticides like dieldrin and aldrin, and chemicals from jet fuel have contaminated the region’s water supply.

Two memories stand out to Terrine Crooks from her arrival at George Air Force Base in the summer of 1980. One is the sense of apprehension she felt at seeing for the first time the broad, flat, barren expanse of the base on the skirt-tails of the Mojave Desert. “I was like, ‘oh my God.’ I was a New Hampshire girl who’d left [Read More…]