7: TOXIC ENVIRONMENTS

  1. Saipan Tribune, “Navy Granted Use of Farallon de Medinilla,” May 23, 2002; DMZ Hawai`i Aloha 'Aina, “Navy to Conduct Live-fire Exercises on Farallon de Medinilla,” October 10, 2009, blog, http://www.dmzhawaii.org/?tag=farallon-de-medinilla.

  2. Robert F. Durant, The Greening of the U.S. Military: Environmental Policy, National Security, and Organizational Change (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2007), 6–8.

  3. Ibid., 5.

  4. Ibid., 5–9.

  5. Ibid., 11.

  6. U.S. Army Garrison Vicenza, “Del Din Green Building Education Tour,” presentation slides, Vicenza, Italy, n.d. [2013].

  7. Sharon Weiner, “Environmental Concerns at U.S. Overseas Military Installations,” working paper, Defense and Army Control Studies Program, Center for International Studies, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, July 1992, 4.

  8. Michael T. Klare, The Race for What’s Left: The Global Scramble for the World’s Last Resources (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2012), 13.

  9. David S. Sorenson, Military Base Closure: A Reference Handbook (Westport, CT: Praeger Security International, 2007), 67.

10. Ibid., 69–70; John M. R. Bull, “The Deadliness Below: Weapons of Mass Destruction Thrown into the Sea Years Ago Present Danger Now—and the Army Doesn’t Know Where They All Are,” Daily Press (Hampton Roads, VA), October 30, 2005.

11. Durant, Greening, 77–79.

12. In the United States, the military won exemptions to parts of the Endangered Species and Marine Mammal Protection acts and has sought exemption from the Clean Air Act and other environmental laws. Congress provided an exemption to the Migratory Bird Treaty Act in 2003 in response to a court ruling that naval training on Farallon de Medinilla violated the act. Government Accountability Office, “Military Training: Compliance with Environmental Laws Affects Some Training Activities, but DOD Has Not Made a Sound Business Case for Additional Environmental Exemptions,” GAO-08-407, March 2008.

13. Jon Mitchell, “Pollution Rife on Okinawa’s U.S.-Returned Base Land,” Japan Times, December 4, 2013.

14. Weiner, “Environmental Concerns,” 24–25; Sorenson, Base Closure, 120.

15. Dina Fine Maron, “Toxic Burn Pits at U.S. Marine Base in Afghanistan Threaten Health,” Scientific American, July 11, 2013, http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/2013/07/11/toxic-burn-pits-at-u-s-marine-base-in-afghanistan-threaten-health/.

16. Spencer Ackerman, “Leaked Memo: Afghan ‘Burn Pit’ Could Wreck Troops’ Hearts, Lungs,” Danger Room blog, Wired.com, May 22, 2012, http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/05/bagram-health-risk.

17. Sorenson, Base Closure, 69.

18. Peter H. Sand, U.S. and the U.K. in Diego Garcia: The Future of a Controversial Base (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 51–62; David Vine, S. Wojciech Sokolowski, and Philip Harvey, “Dérasiné: The Expulsion and Impoverishment of the Chagossian People [Diego Garcia]” (unpublished expert report, April 9, 2005), 183–90.

19. Ari Phillips, “Decades-Old Underground Jet Fuel Leak in New Mexico Still Decades from Being Cleaned Up,” ThinkProgress.org, January 14, 2014, http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/01/14/3160291/kirtland-jet-fuel-leak-water-contaminated/#.

20. Environment News Service, “Residents Near U.S. Okinawa Air Base Sue over Noise,” April 28, 2011, http://ens-newswire.com/2011/04/28/residents-near-u-s-okinawa-air-base-sue-over-noise-3/.

21. Office of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, “Observations on Solid Waste Disposal Methods in Use at Camp Leatherneck,” alert, Department of Defense, Alexandria, VA, July 17, 2013.

22. Dina Fine Maron, “Pentagon Weighs Cleanups as It Plans Iraq Exit,” New York Times, January 13, 2010.

23. Richard Albright, Cleanup of Chemical and Explosive Munitions: Location, Identification and Environmental Remediation (Oxford: William Andrew, 2008), 118, 122–23, 126–28; Charles Bermphol, “Spring Valley: At Risk from WWI Poisons?” Current Supplement, B10–11.

24. Albright, Cleanup, 123; Mark Leone, “How the Landscape of Fear Works in Spring Valley, a Washington, D.C. Neighborhood,” City and Society 18, no. 1 (2006): 37.

25. Harry Jaffe, “Ground Zero,” Washingtonian, December 1, 2000; Steve Vogel, “U.S. Ignored High Arsenic Level at NW Home in Mid-’90s,” Washington Post, July 25, 2001, A1.

26. Harry Jaffe, “Eleanor Holmes Norton Wants Family Relocated from Spring Valley Superfund Site,” Washingtonian, February 21, 2013, http://www.washingtonian.com/blogs/capitalcomment/local-news/eleanor-holmes-norton-wants-family-relocated-from-spring-valley-superfund-site.php; Jaffe, “Ground Zero.”

27. Jaffe, “Ground Zero.”

28. Jaffe, “Eleanor Holmes Norton”; Brady Holt, “Neighbors Back Plans for Glenbrook Road Cleanup,” Northwest Current, November 2, 2011, 1, 29.

29. Jaffe, “Eleanor Holmes Norton.”

30. Sorenson, Base Closure, 120.

31. Ashley Rowland, “U.S. Military: No Agent Orange at South Korea Base,” Stars and Stripes, June 23, 2011.

32. Yonhap News, “Underground Water Near Seoul’s U.S. Military Camp Contaminated,” October 23, 2012, http://english.yonhapnews.co.kr/national/2012/10/23/27/0301000000AEN20121023007900315F.html.

33. Jason Strother, “Environmental Investigation Underway on US Base in S. Korea,” Voice of America News, June 28, 2011, http://www.voanews.com/english/news/Environmental-Investigation-Underway-on-US-Base-in-South-Korea-124639199.html.

34. Tammy Leitner, “Valley Veteran Blows Whistle on Burial of Agent Orange; Steve House, 2 Others Say They Just Followed Orders in 1978,” KPHO CBS 5 News, May 13, 2011, http://www.kpho.com/news/27892124/detail.html.

35. Christine Ahn and Gwyn Kirk, “Agent Orange in Korea,” Foreign Policy in Focus, July 7, 2011, http://www.fpif.org/articles/agent_orange_in_Korea.

36. Strother, “Environmental Investigation Underway”; Environmental Protection Agency, “An Introduction to Indoor Air Quality (IAQ): Formaldahyde,” June 20, 2012, http://www.epa.gov/iaq/formaldehyde.html#Health_Effects; Gillem, 46–47.

37. Bandjunis, Diego Garcia, 47–49.

38. Peter H. Sand, email to author, October 19, 2009.

39. Cathal Milmo, “British Government under Fire for Pollution of Pristine Lagoon,” Independent, March 28, 2014, http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/exclusive-british-government-under-fire-for-pollution-of-pristine-lagoon-9222170.html; Cathal Milmo, “Exclusive: World’s Most Pristine Waters Are Polluted by US Navy Human Waste,” Independent, March 15, 2014, http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/exclusive-worlds-most-pristine-waters-are-polluted-by-us-navy-human-waste-9193596.html.

40. Steve Goldstein, “They ‘Punched Out’ and Lived to Tell,” Edmonton Journal, May 26, 2002, Sunday Reader, D6.

41. Jon Mitchell, “Fears Widen over Kadena Toxins,” Japan Times, February 1, 2014.

42. Sorenson, Base Closure, 120.

43. Weiner, “Environmental Concerns.”

44. John Lindsay-Poland, “U.S. Military Bases in Latin America and the Caribbean,” in Bases of Empire, 87.

45. Katherine T. McCaffrey, “Environmental Struggle after the Cold War: New Forms of Resistance to the U.S. Military in Vieques, Puerto Rico,” in Bases of Empire, 235–37; McCaffrey, Military Power; Lindsay-Poland, “U.S. Military Bases,” 87; see also Lindsay-Poland, Emperors in the Jungle.

46. David Beardon, “Vieques and Culebra Islands: An Analysis of Cleanup Status and Costs,” Congressional Research Service, report, Washington, DC, July 7, 2005; McCaffrey, “Environmental Struggle,” 218; Ben Fox, “Vieques Cleanup: Island at Odds with U.S. Government Declaration That 400-Acre Bomb Site Cleanup Is Complete,” Associated Press, October 5, 2012, available at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/05/vieques-cleanup-bomb-site_n_1942107.html.

47. National Park Service, American Memorial Park, Saipan, CNMI.

48. Nautilus Institute for Security and Sustainability, “Toxic Bases in the Pacific,” APSNet Special Reports, November 25, 2005, http://nautilus.org/apsnet/toxic-bases-in-the-pacific.

49. Urban Niblo, memo to Chief of Ordnance, Pentagon, “Report of Bomb Disposal Activities, Marianas-Bonins Command,” June 9, 1947.

50. Natividad and Kirk, “Fortress Guam.”

51. Nic Maclellan, “Toxic Bases in the Pacific,” Pacific News Bulletin, 2000; Natividad and Kirk, “Fortress Guam”; Saipan Tribune, “U.S. EPA Completes Water Sampling,” May 25, 2000, http://www.saipantribune.com/index.php/95eba5ac-1dfb-11e4-aedf-250bc8c9958e/.

52. Government Accountability Office, “DOD Can Improve Its Response to Environmental Exposures on Military Installations,” report to Congress, Washington, DC, May 2012, 28n54; Maclellan, “Toxic Bases”; Natividad and Kirk, “Fortress Guam”; Sorenson, Base Closure, 68; Jon Mitchell, “‘Deny, Deny Until All the Veterans Die’—Pentagon Investigation into Agent Orange on Okinawa,” Truthout.com, June 13, 2013, http://truth-out.org/news/item/16945-deny-deny-until-all-the-veterans-die-pentagon-investigation-into-agent-orange-on-okinawa.

53. Robert Hicks, “Andersen AFB Saves $25 Million with Contamination Cleanup Concept,” Air Force news, http://www.af.mil/news/story.asp?id=123339500.

54. Nicholas Duchesne, “Death from the Skies!” Slate, December 3, 2013, http://www.slate.com/blogs/wild_things/2013/12/04/poison_pill_mice_parachuted_onto_guam_fighting_brown_tree_snakes_with_tylenol.html.

55. Travis J. Tritten and Lisa Tourtelot, “US Wants to Expand Training Exercises in Western Pacific,” Stars and Stripes, November 3, 2013, http://www.stripes.com/news/us-wants-to-expand-training-exercises-in-western-pacific-1.250588; Zoe Loftus-Farren, “US Plans to Expand War Games in Ecologically Rich Mariana Islands,” Earth Island Journal, November 22, 2013, http://www.earthisland.org/journal/index.php/elist/eListRead/us_plans_to_expand_war_games_in_ecologically_rich_mariana_islands/. See also savepaganisland.org and http://www.cnmijointmilitarytrainingeis.com.

56. Natividad and Kirk, “Fortress Guam.” Chamorros on Guam also suffer from diabetes at approximately five times the U.S. rate.

57. Government Accountability Office, “DOD Can Improve,” 53–54.

58. McCaffrey, Military Power, 9–10.