[CPEO-MEF] USA Today - Pentagon against regulators

[Lenny Siegel <lsiegel@cpeo.org>]

Pollution cleanups pit Pentagon against regulators
Millions live on or near highly contaminated sites

By Peter Eisler
USA TODAY
October 14, 2004

DENVER - Amy Ford's baby girl was just learning to crawl last year when
men in respirators and hazardous materials suits showed up at the
family's suburban home to tear out the yard.

Since then, workers have hauled away tons of asbestos-laced soil from
the new development of $500,000 houses. The pollution is a vestige of
Lowry Air Force Base, which closed in 1994 and was sold for $8 million
to a redevelopment agency set up by the cities of Denver and Aurora. The
1,800-acre site now supports 2,800 homes, schools, shopping areas,
offices and parks.

State health and environmental officials found bits of asbestos in the
ground in 2003 and ordered that all contaminated soil be removed. They
said that if the soil was disturbed - by gardening or by children
playing, for example - the asbestos fibers might get into the air and
raise residents' risks of debilitating lung problems.

But Air Force officials have refused to pay for the $15 million dig.
They say the state used bad science to conclude that the risks from the
asbestos were high enough to warrant a cleanup. That has left the
redevelopment agency and builders to do the work and pay the bill. And
the Air Force has done no cleanup at all on 22 vacant acres it still
hasn't sold in the community.

?You have citizens here who want to preserve property values, who want
to preserve the safety of their families and see this community
developed as it was promised," Ford says. "The Air Force is refusing to
take responsibility."

Lowry isn't the only neighborhood wrestling the military over
environmental damage. Across the nation, the Pentagon is taking
extraordinary steps to limit the military's accountability for a 50-year
legacy of pollution, a USA TODAY investigation finds. The moves reflect
a Bush administration view that the armed services' national security
mission gives them special standing to challenge environmental laws and
the state and federal agencies that enforce them.

...

for the entire article, see
http://www.usatoday.com/printedition/news/20041014/1a_cover13.art.htm

-- 


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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