[CPEO-MEF] Vieques editorial in New York Times

[Lenny Siegel <lsiegel@cpeo.org>]

A Debt Unpaid

Editorial
New York Times
August 17, 2006


Vieques, a small island off the coast of Puerto Rico, made headlines a 
few years back when environmental activists engaged in civil 
disobedience aimed at forcing the Navy to stop using it for bombing 
practice. The Navy bowed to the pressure and departed in May 2003, 
leaving behind 60 years worth of bomb fragments and an untold amount of 
unexploded ordnance.

It also left behind an obligation to clean the place up, an obligation 
made more urgent by the possibility of a link between the damage on the 
ground — the pollution of the soil and the local water supply — and a 
variety of physical ailments that have been detected among residents.

Neither the Navy nor the Environmental Protection Agency is prepared to 
say for sure that this link exists. The desperate poverty in which 
Vieques residents live may be at least partly responsible for the high 
disease rates, and no study by federal authorities has established a 
clear connection between the contaminants and various illnesses.


...

For the entire editorial, see
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/17/opinion/17thur3.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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