Military's Attitude Towards Environmental Cleanup

[LocInc@aol.com]

To the CareerPro List:

I may have a different perspective on the military's attitude towards
environmental cleanup and pollution prevention. I worked for environmental
consulting firms for 10 years and participated on or managed numerous
projects at military bases. In all cases the key personnel on base, and
usually the base commander, were very supportive of the environmental work.

This work ranged from cleaning up minor historical sites (tank leaks, small
landfills, old septic systems, etc.) to addressing difficult and/or major
basewide problems (huge releases of jet fuel, radiological contamination,
solvent plumes, etc.). Included also were environmental baseline studies for
base closures.

Of the services, the Air Force seems to have taken the lead on these issues,
being the first to move forward on aggressively addressing historical
problems and putting appropriate waste management and pollution prevention
practices in place. The Navy and Army have followed the USAF lead, although
apparently they were not as quick to take on their environmental challenges.

Whether or not a base chooses to be a good environmental citizen seems to
depend on a number of factors: which branch of service, attitude of the base
commander, public/political pressure, availability of funding, and difficulty
of the problem(s).

There seems to be an attitude amoung the lay (non-environmental-technical)
public that the military can clean up their contamination problems and are
just choosing not to. In fact, many of these problems that have not been
addressed are intractable, given the current state of the technology. Other
major problems go ignored because there are no receptors, so there is no risk
to populations that would justify the huge expenditures required.

>From reading the mail on the list, it's apparent that many bases have not
made the progress that correspondants would like to see; however, I haven't
seen the success stories posted that I know are out there. In particular, I
know that Massachusettes Military Reservation has spent tens of millions of
dollars on environmental clean-up and management, yet I am reading a lot of
complaints about progress. There have been some very successful clean-up
activities at MMR, particularly with respect to source area
remediations--what's left is the hard stuff that may not yield to
conventional technologies or the huge problems that suck up a lot of money
with little return.

By the way, when you complain about the military, keep in mind that many
corporate polluters are much worse, and considerably more recalcitrant,
because environmental management impacts their bottom-line. They just aren't
subject to the same public scrutiny as agencies that receive our tax money.

I sure enjoy reading the comments and hope that the contributers are making a
difference in their communities. I would be interested in hearing from
people who have met with local base environmental managers (often a civilian
position) and/or base commanders regarding the contamination problems and
their perspectives on progress to date.

Regards,
Susan Gawarecki, Ph.D., P.G.
Executive Director
Oak Ridge Reservation Local Oversight Committee, Inc.