U.S. Military Is World’s Largest Polluter – Hundreds Of Bases Gravely Contaminated

[Mikael Forsberg]

U.S. Military Is World’s Largest Polluter – Hundreds Of Bases Gravely
Contaminated

Producing more hazardous waste than the five largest U.S. chemical
companies combined, the U.S. Department of Defense has left its toxic
legacy throughout the world in the form of depleted uranium, oil, jet
fuel, pesticides, defoliants like Agent Orange and lead, among other
pollutants.

MINNEAPOLIS– Last week, mainstream media outlets gave minimal attention
to the news that the U.S. Naval station in Virginia Beach had spilled an
estimated 94,000 gallons of jet fuel into a nearby waterway, less than a
mile from the Atlantic Ocean. While the incident was by no means as
catastrophic as some other pipeline spills, it underscores an important
yet little-known fact – that the U.S. Department of Defense is both the
nation’s and the world’s, largest polluter.

Producing more hazardous waste than the five largest U.S. chemical
companies combined, the U.S. Department of Defense has left its toxic
legacy throughout the world in the form of depleted uranium, oil, jet
fuel, pesticides, defoliants like Agent Orange and lead, among others.

In 2014, the former head of the Pentagon’s environmental program told
Newsweek that her office has to contend with 39,000 contaminated areas
spread across 19 million acres just in the U.S. alone.

U.S. military bases, both domestic and foreign, consistently rank among
some of the most polluted places in the world, as perchlorate and other
components of jet and rocket fuel contaminate sources of drinking water,
aquifers, and soil. Hundreds of military bases can be found on the
Environmental Protection Agency’s list of Superfund sites, which qualify
for clean-up grants from the government.

Almost 900 of the nearly 1,200 Superfund sites in the U.S. are abandoned
military facilities or sites that otherwise support military needs, not
counting the military bases themselves.

“Almost every military site in this country is seriously contaminated,”
John D. Dingell, a retired Michigan congressman and war veteran, told
Newsweek in 2014. Camp Lejeune in Jacksonville, North Carolina is one
such base. Lejeune’s contamination became widespread and even deadly
after its groundwater was polluted with a sizable amount of carcinogens
from 1953 to 1987.

However, it was not until this February that the government allowed
those exposed to chemicals at Lejeune to make official compensation
claims. Numerous bases abroad have also contaminated local drinking
water supplies, most famously the Kadena Air Force Base in Okinawa.

In addition, the U.S., which has conducted more nuclear weapons tests
than all other nations combined, is also responsible for the massive
amount of radiation that continues to contaminate many islands in the
Pacific Ocean. The Marshall Islands, where the U.S. dropped more than
sixty nuclear weapons between 1946 and 1958, are a particularly notable
example. Inhabitants of the Marshall Islands and nearby Guam continue to
experience an exceedingly high rate of cancer.

The American Southwest was also the site of numerous nuclear weapons
tests that contaminated large swaths of land. Navajo Indian reservations
have been polluted by long-abandoned uranium mines where nuclear
material was obtained by U.S. military contractors.

One of the most recent testaments to the U.S. military’s horrendous
environmental record is Iraq. U.S. military action there has resulted in
the desertification of 90 percent of Iraqi territory, crippling the
country’s agricultural industry and forcing it to import more than 80
percent of its food. The U.S.’ use of depleted uranium in Iraq during
the Gulf War also caused a massive environmental burden for Iraqis. In
addition, the U.S. military’s policy of using open-air burn pits to
dispose of waste from the 2003 invasion has caused a surge in cancer
among U.S. servicemen and Iraqi civilians alike.

While the U.S. military’s past environmental record suggests that its
current policies are not sustainable, this has by no means dissuaded the
U.S. military from openly planning future contamination of the
environment through misguided waste disposal efforts. Last November, the
U.S. Navy announced its plan to release 20,000 tons of environmental
“stressors,” including heavy metals and explosives, into the coastal
waters of the U.S. Pacific Northwest over the course of this year.

The plan, laid out in the Navy’s Northwest Training and Testing
Environmental Impact Statement (EIS), fails to mention that these
“stressors” are described by the EPA as known hazards, many of which are
highly toxic at both acute and chronic levels.

The 20,000 tons of “stressors” mentioned in the EIS do not account for
the additional 4.7 to 14 tons of “metals with potential toxicity” that
the Navy plans to release annually, from now on, into inland waters
along the Puget Sound in Washington state.

In response to concerns about these plans, a Navy spokeswoman said that
heavy metals and even depleted uranium are no more dangerous than any
other metal, a statement that represents a clear rejection of scientific
fact. It seems that the very U.S. military operations meant to “keep
Americans safe” come at a higher cost than most people realize – a cost
that will be felt for generations to come both within the United States
and abroad.

http://www.mintpressnews.com/u-s-military-is-worlds-largest-polluter-hundreds-of-bases-gravely-contaminated/227776/


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