[CPEO-MEF] Column on Moffett wetlands

[Lenny Siegel <lsiegel@cpeo.org>]

Navy's stalling at Moffett Field threatens wetland renewal efforts

By David Lewis
Guest Column
San Jose Mercury News (CA)
May 9, 2005

Despite four years of outcry from local residents, the U.S. Navy is
still considering leaving a toxic legacy along the Mountain View
shoreline at Moffett Field. An imminent Navy decision could dash hopes
for restoring more vital tidal marsh for bay fish and wildlife, a
stunning insult to the South Bay communities that were good neighbors to
the military for decades.

For 70 years at Moffett Field, the Navy used diked-off former bay
wetlands as a catch basin for runoff contaminated with toxic pesticides,
metals, PCBs, solvents and jet fuel. The Navy acknowledged its
responsibility for cleaning up what is now called Site 25 in a 1990
agreement with state and federal pollution agencies.

Today, after 15 years, the Navy is dragging its feet and trying to avoid
a full cleanup of these contaminants, which continue to threaten
wildlife. As long as contaminants remain, the former wetlands at Site 25
cannot be restored to healthy tidal marsh, the habitat that San
Francisco Bay needs most to recover from the urban fill, dredging and
dumping that have destroyed 90 percent of its historic wetlands.

...

For the entire article, see
http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/opinion/11600619.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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