MMR Munitions Cleanup - Letter to the Editor

[OrdToxics@aol.com]

8-27-99

Hello Friends of FOTP:

Here is something I want to share with all of you who have an interest in the 
Ordnance and Explosives Waste (OEW) cleanup at Fort Ord, CA.  

Our explosives cleanup issues and community involvement issues are not 
isolated, nor unique to our struggle with the Army here at Fort Ord, CA.  

The attacks on individuals, community activists and local residents is geared 
to undermining their credibility and thereby getting the public to discount 
an important message.  The message is, ... the military is shirking its 
responsibility to cleanup its post cold war environmental trash piles 
(bases)!     

Our issues are the same.  However, there is one big difference, the state of 
Massachusetts environmental department, EPA-Region I, Rep. Delahunt and the 
local newspaper (Cape Cod Times) are working in support of their "community 
activists," ... not against them!  

I own a home on Cape Cod, next to this Massachusetts Military Reservation and 
have attended some of those base cleanup public meetings.  I was shocked at 
the high level of support given to the "community participants" by the 
regulatory agencies and the press.  "Community activists" have no problem 
getting their information and opinions accurately reported in the local press.

Given the political climate created by our representatives, I doubt if we 
will ever see letters to the editor like this one printed in our local 
newspapers (Monterey County Herald).  Many in this community seem to have 
forgotten what 1776 was all about!  

Maybe its time for our regulators, politicos and press folks to take a little 
field trip back to the heart of the American Revolution, so they can 
reacquaint themselves with who they represent and why?

Regards,
Curt Gandy
Executive Director
Fort Ord Toxics Project
--------------------------------------------------

Subj:    MMR
Date:   8/26/99 6:57:54 PM Pacific Daylight Time
From:   rhugus@cape.com (Richard Hugus)
To: ordtoxics@aol.com

August 26, 1999                 

Richard Hugus
5 Amvets Ave
Falmouth, MA 02540
(508) 540-6034

Editor
Cape Cod Times
319 Main St.
Hyannis, MA 02601

Dear Editor,

 Supporters of the National Guard have expressed their anger with the 
media over its publicizing of the search for munitions in a residential
neighborhood just outside the base (actually, once part of the base) in
Forestdale.  These supporters have an odd way of placing responsibility for
the munitions on the shoulders of the people who reported them rather than
on the people who put them there -- the Army and the Army National Guard.
The Guard's public affairs personnel set the example early on, making sure
to concentrate on the messenger rather than the message, and thus making it
clear that future whistleblowers will suffer the consequences.

 The fact is that once-live Bazooka rounds were ultimately discovered in
the Forestdale neighborhood search.  The military has improperly disposed of
live ordnance in and around the Massachusetts Military Reservation for
nearly 60 years.  We are just now hearing about it.  People who say the Army
has been a good caretaker of Camp Edwards are just plain wrong.  We may
never get to the bottom of exactly how much unexploded ordnance is laying
around the base, but the presence of explosives in the groundwater all over
the impact area and training range tells the story clearly enough.  It is a
pity that the military itself did not come forward with information about
any of this.  The Army knows what it did with its munitions, yet has had to
be dragged kicking and screaming into divulging it.

 When the lease for Camp Edwards is taken back by the state, it will be
long past time to invite the Guard to leave.  Efforts to redress the damage
of the past 60 years can then begin.

Richard Hugus
Falmouth, MA

(Richard Hugus is a citizen member of the Camp Edwards Impact Area Study 
Team.)