DOD's ENVIRONMENTAL RECORD

[Lenny Siegel <lsiegel@igc.org>]

DOD's ENVIRONMENTAL RECORD

This came to me from someone in the Defense Department cleanup program.

Lenny,

At the risk or raising the ire of some of your participants, and in
response to your offer, please feel free to post the following if you
feel it will contribute to the fascinating on-going dialog on this
subject.

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With regard to the cleanup side of the DoD readiness/environmental
equation, please try to remember that DoD's past HW [hazardous waste] 
management/
disposal actions, those that lead to DoD's current cleanup
legacy, were NOT done with intentional disregard for human health and
the environment as many of the participants on this dialog have
implied. DoD's actions were, for the most part, the standard
management practices in place in this country at the time. We, as a
nation, simply did not know better. How many of you, or your parents,
drained the oil out of the car onto the ground, or poured used
solvents into the gutter back in the 50's and 60's? Since the mid
70's, when we all began to understand what we were doing to our
environment, DoD's practices began to change too, to stay in
compliance with emerging environmental regulations. Yes, there are
still isolated instances of callous disregard for human health and the
environment, but those are individual actions and not representative
of a lack of environmental ethic within DoD, any more than similar
acts within the private sector are representative of an overall lack
of a national ethic.

With the public scrutiny that is placed on the decision process within
DoD, I do not believe that SECDEF [the Secretary of Defense] would ever 
exercise his authority to waive environmental requirements in the 
interest of readiness and the
national defense unless it were truly, ABSOLUTELY necessary. SECDEF
is not a military bureaucrat, but rather our CIVILIAN leadership,
serving at the pleasure of our President, to ensure that the military
DOESN'T control its own destiny.

 Keep up the dialog