Oral Histories of Base Pollution

[Lenny Siegel <lsiegel@cpeo.org>]

ORAL HISTORY PROJECTS CAN PRESERVE VITAL INFORMATION ON PAST POLLUTION

Former military base workers carry around in their heads enormous
valuable knowledge about past environmental practices. Particularly if
they were employed on site in the era before environmental statutes and
protective practices, they know where the chemicals were dumped, where
the explosives might be found, and in one case that I've heard
third-hand, where the skeletons are buried. Good cleanup programs seek
out these workers, and though they are not always accurate, they appear
often to be more reliable than extant official records.

Recently, for example, the San Antonio Express-News (November 22, 1998)
cited a retired worker from Kelly Air Force Base, who every December
would move "from one vat to the next on the ['Green Worm' 2,150-foot
long] parts cleaner, opening valves to let tens of thousands of gallons
of smelly black liquids flow into the ground."

Often, however, the military does not seek such testimony. Maybe base
officials want to avoid the bad news. After all, buried hazards don't
always spread. And it costs to collect the information.

Still, as these workers age or die, more and more information becomes
irretrievable. As one person suggested last week at a subgroup meeting
of the National Dialogue on Military Munitions, it would make sense to
collect this information while it's still available, rather than wait
until cleanup programs are ready to respond.

Diverting money from actual remediation for such a large-scale effort
would probably not be popular, but there may be other ways to collect
the information. An installation can initiate oral history projects, to
collect information on the base's past, the about property before it
became a base, and on questionable environmental practices. There are
already some such programs in place. For example, at Fort Carson,
Colorado, the Army recently completed oral history projects on both the
ranchers/farmers and Indians who lived there before it became a base.
(See "Environmental Update," Army Environmental Center, Fall, 1998.)

Where cultural resource funding doesn't cover such projects, it may be
possible for the Defense Department to conduct the research at low cost
by partnering with area colleges. Both the information collected and the
skills learned in conducting interviews should prove valuable to those
institutions and their students.

Either this is an idea whose time has come, or will soon pass.

Lenny

Lenny Siegel
Director, Center for Public Environmental Oversight
c/o PSC, 222B View St., Mountain View, CA 94041
Voice: 650/961-8918 or 650/969-1545
Fax: 650/968-1126
lsiegel@cpeo.org
http://www.cpeo.org