U.S. Military Under Attack on Environmental Grounds

LEWISTON, Maine, June 25, 2001 (ENS) - A coalition of citizens organizations is challenging the U.S. Armed Forces, alleging that the health and safety of communities across the country is under assault from past and current polluting military operations.

In a new national campaign, citizens impacted by military operations from Hooper Bay, Alaska to Vieques, Puerto Rico are participating in the Military Toxics Project’s effort to hold the U.S. military accountable to the same laws that apply to all other sectors of society.

The military is not subject to most laws that protect communities and workers, either because it is completely exempt or because the Environmental Protection Agency has no enforcement authority, says Steve Taylor, national coordinator for the Maine based Military Toxics Project.

Congressman Bob Filner (Photo courtesy Office of the Congressman)

On June 13, Filner introduced the Military Environmental Responsibility Act, which seeks to remove all military exemptions from existing environmental, worker and public safety laws and regulations.

To back up the new bill, the Military Toxics Project (MTP) released to Congress a report entitled "Defend Our Health: The U.S. Military’s Environmental Assault On Communities." Prepared by MTP and Environmental Health Coalition, an environmental justice organization based in San Diego, the report shows how military exemptions from laws and lax enforcement by regulatory agencies have contributed to the existence of more than 27,000 toxic hot spots on 8,500 military properties across the country.

Based on the findings of this report, the citizens' groups charge that military activities like legal and illegal toxic dumping, testing and use of munitions, manufacture and use of depleted uranium ammunition, hazardous waste generation, nuclear propulsion, toxic air emissions have created "an environmental catastrophe."

Department of Defense spokesman Lt. Dave Gai says military personnel are members of the same communities that their critics say they are polluting. "We live in the same communities, we have an equally justifiable interest in maintaining the safety and preservation of the environment," he says.

While acknowledging that the military is exempt from some laws, Lt. Gai said, "We are subject to many of the same laws and regulations that industry and public sector are subject to."

Aricraft carrier USS Constellation departs its home port of San Diego, California, to begin a regularly scheduled western Pacific deployment, April 1, 1977. (U.S. Navy photo by Photographer's Mate Airman Neil Sheinbaum)

"No federal law applies to the military unless Congress specifically makes that law apply to the military," Taylor said.

Filner's newly introduced bill, now before the House Armed Services Committee, would entirely waive any and all sovereign immunity and revoke all exemptions of the Department of Defense and all other defense related agencies within the United States and abroad from complying with all federal and state environmental laws that protect the health and safety of the public or the environment.

Certain laws do not apply to the military at all, such as the Oil Pollution Act and the Noise Act, Taylor says.

Most environmental laws, Taylor explains, are basically laws in which Congress has attempted to waive sovereign immunity and make them apply to the military, but these laws have run into problems of court interpretation or language with the waiver. These then become laws that do not apply fully to the military. Taylor says examples of such laws are the Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act and the Comprehensive Environmental Response Compensation Liability Act, commonly known as the Superfund law.

There are some laws that do apply to the military such as the Safe Drinking Water Act and the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act which governs the management of solid, hazardous, and medical waste.

F/A 18 Hornet flies over Nevada (Photo courtesy Fallon Naval Air Station)

The Military Toxics Project report shows that communities and individuals adjacent to military operations, as well as active duty personnel, veterans, and civilian workers suffer from elevated cancer rates, intergenerational health problems, contaminated subsistence food chains, nuclear safety threats, intolerable noise and disruption, bombing of sacred areas, and destruction of wildlife habitat.

The report offers these among other examples:

• In Cape Cod, Massachusetts, the Massachusetts Military Reservation contaminated the sole source of drinking water for 424,445 permanent and seasonal residents.

• In Hooper Bay, Alaska, the Cape Romanzof Long Range Radar Station contaminated the subsistence food supply that native villages depend upon for their survival.

• In Lassen County, California, the Sierra Army Depot is the largest source of toxic air emissions in the state, releasing hazardous substances including mercury, lead, beryllium, copper, dioxins, and polychlorinated biphenyls.

• In Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, federal health investigators tied low birth weights to exposure to volatile organic compounds released by Tinker Air Force Base.

• In Fallon, Nevada, next door to Fallon Naval Air Station, 14 children have been diagnosed with cancer since 1997, all but one with acute lymphocytic leukemia. Earlier this month, one boy died of the disease, prompting Nevada Senator Harry Reid to call for an investigation the possible causes of the childhood leukemia cluster.

  The Nevada Democrat, who now chairs the Environment and Public Works Committee, said he will seek additional information from the U.S. Navy, and the Secretary of Transportation on the transportation, storage, use and disposal of jet fuel in Fallon.

These are not exemptions sought by the military, said the official, they were established by Congress and Executive Order and by the Environmental Protection Agency.