Vieques report analysis

[Pauline Simon <cpeo@cpeo.org>]

The report of the Special Panel on Military Operations on Vieques,
released on October 18, 1999 does not resolve the controversy on the
Navy's continued use of the island, but it helps clarify the issues.

First, both the title - "Report to the Secretary of Defense ..." and the
URL with the text
http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Oct1999/viq_101899.html make clear that
this is NOT, as the press has suggested, the work of a Presidential
panel, but the product of a Defense Department sponsored group formed at
the request of the President. The panel neither ignores Puerto Rican
critics of the Navy nor parrots the warfighters' point of view, but the
report will be perceived, for better or worse, as a product of the
Pentagon.

The panel appears to have listened carefully to Puerto Rican officials.
A number of its recommendations - posted verbatim as a separate message
earlier - directly address local concerns about noise, safety, economic
development, and channels of communications. Most significantly, it
proposes that the Navy "expeditiously" clean and transfer most of the
western third of Vieques - the Naval Ammunition Facility - to Puerto
Rico, opening up the possibility of better transportation connections
with the Puerto Rican mainland.

Its principal recommendations, however, address the future of military
training exercises on the eastern half of Vieques. The Navy, says the
panel, should establish the "objective of ceasing all training
activities at Vieques within five years." It also "recommends that,
effective immediately, the Navy reduce the expenditure of live fire
(bombs, naval gunfire, and artillery) by 50 percent from 1998 activity
levels, and reduce the availability of the impact area from 365 days per
year to 130 days per year."

These proposals are unlikely to satisfy the protesters on the island and
their political supporters throughout the Puerto Rican diaspora, nor
will it resolve the environmental issues now being addressed by the U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency and the Puerto Rican government. The
Panel's report, therefore, will not become the resolution of the debate,
but the floor of the military's position. That is, the Navy will have to
find a new place to conduct training or alter its training requirements
in the Atlantic basin, whether or not its use of Vieques is permitted
again (for less than five years). 

The Panel, as one might expect a body convened by the Department of
Defense, actually looked quite closely at the Navy's training
requirements: "The Panel concludes that at present there is a valid
requirement for the Navy to conduct combined arms exercises involving
live air-to-ground ordnance, naval surface fire support and the combined
arms live fire training needed to provide combat ready forces for
deployment.... the Panel is convinced that such training is vital to
preparing deploying forces for possible combat and that, without such
training, the risk to personnel is increased."

However, it found, "it is the opinion of the Panel that the availability
and convenience of Vieques for pre-deployment training may have
influenced the assessment of alternative training sites and methods of
training. With this in mind, it is the Panel's opinion, that renewed
efforts to further define criteria and approaches are warranted in the
effort to identify alternatives to Vieques." It suggests, "new
technologies, new techniques, and new weapons systems will rapidly
change training requirements and methods.... adequate alternative sites
may exist to meet these changing training requirements with alternative
training methods in the future."

This is a significant finding, because each time the military is forced
by environmental or even just political concerns to close a range or to
curtail its use, many of the people who live near the remaining ranges
wonder why they're ending up with the noise, pollution, and explosive
hazards in their backyards.

The Defense Panel did not address the challenge of cleaning up Vieques.
Perhaps this was beyond its scope. It states that the official Live
Impact Area covers only 900 acres, while the Eastern Maneuver Area
covers 11,000 acres. If indeed, unexploded ordnance is generally
confined to those 900 acres, then the cost of remediation will NOT be
prohibitive. But I find it hard to believe that jets dropping "dumb"
bombs and large Navy guns consistently released their munitions into
such a small area, for decades. In fact, the current controversy was
triggered by an April 19, 1999 incident, in which a Navy jet bombed an
observation post far from the impact area.

Lenny Siegel

-- 


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


You can find archived listserve messages on the CPEO website at http://www.cpeo.org/lists/index.html.

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