[CPEO-MEF] Iraq cleanup

[Lenny Siegel <lsiegel@cpeo.org>]

[For me, this article revives the question: Which is more costly to the
environment, warfare or the constant state of preparing for war? In
either case, $40 million is not much in the environmental cleanup
business. It may take that much, in the U.S., to clean up a single toxic
groundwater plume. - LS]

Iraq faces huge environmental cleanup job 

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER
November 11, 2005

GENEVA -- Iraq faces a massive $40 million environmental cleanup
campaign to tackle the lethal toxic and radioactive legacy of more than
two decades of conflict and neglect, a U.N. agency and Iraqi authorities
said Thursday.

Five sites near Baghdad, described by the United Nations Environment
Program, UNEP, as "the tip of the iceberg," have been identified for an
initial cleanup, but there are thought to be thousands more.

"There are thousands of polluted areas in Iraq, either from industrial
or military pollution," Iraq's environment minister, Narmin Othman, said
at the launch of a UNEP assessment of environmental hot spots in Iraq.

The UNEP report highlighted the Al-Qadyissa metal plating facility,
bombed during the U.S. invasion, where several tons of cyanide pellets
are scattered around a site accessible to children.

...

For the entire article,
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/247992_iraqtoxic11.html



-- 


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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