[CPEO-MEF] Secrecy lawsuit planned at Aberdeen Proving Ground

[Lenny Siegel <lsiegel@cpeo.org>]

Environmental group plans suit over APG maps

Contamination site reference points omitted; Post-9/11 security
concerns; Officials say new policies led to miscommunication

By Lane Harvey Brown
Baltimore Sun 

May 25, 2003

A citizens group that monitors environmental cleanup at Aberdeen Proving
Ground is preparing to sue the installation for failing to supply
information it says is critical to its work, bringing to a head a
controversy that surfaced last fall when base security officers began
editing maps or refusing to release them altogether. 

"We'll think we have a solution and request something else, and [then]
we don't get maps," said Glenda Bowling, president of the Aberdeen
Proving Ground Superfund Citizens Coalition (APGSCC). 

The coalition, through a lawyer, sent a letter of intent to sue last
week to military and environmental officials, citing APG's alleged
breaches of federal environmental law. 

At the center of the controversy: the community's right to understand
contamination threats in its back yard versus the military's concern
about giving information that terrorists might use to target
installations. 

The issue has rocked the decade-long relationship between one of the
nation's noted community environmental groups and the base over which
they keep watch. 

"In just a few months, the relationship of, if not trust then
understanding, between the community and the military is being destroyed
by an atmosphere of secrecy and fear," said the group's lawyer, Rena
Steinzor, professor and director of the University of Maryland
Environmental Law Clinic. 

... 

for the entire story, either click on the following URL or paste it into
your browser window

http://www.sunspot.net/news/local/harford/bal-ha.base25may25,0,1675351.story?coll=bal%2Dlocal%2Dharford

-- 


Lenny Siegel
Director, Center for Public Environmental Oversight
c/o PSC, 278-A Hope St., Mountain View, CA 94041
Voice: 650/961-8918 or 650/969-1545
Fax: 650/961-8918
<lsiegel@cpeo.org>
http://www.cpeo.org

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