For
Immediate Release
March 23, 2009
For more
information, contact:
Laura Olah, Citizens
for Safe Water Around Badger, WI (608)643-3124
J. Gilbert Sanchez, Tribal Environmental Watch Alliance, NM
(505)927-3457
Evelyn Yates, Pine Bluff
for Safe Disposal, AR (870)536-3349 or (870)788-7308
Mable Mallard, Philadelphia
Right to Know, PA (215)336 -0660 or (215)462-0361
Doris Bradshaw,
Defense Depot Memphis Tennessee Concerned Citizens Committee, TN (901)491-1485
Communities Seek Accountability for Military
Pollution
More
than 80 affected communities and organizations from across the U.S. have joined
together to support federal legislation that will require the Department of
Defense and the Department of Energy to comply with laws designed to protect
human health and the environment.
A
joint letter to the White House, organized by Citizens for Safe Water Around Badger,
expresses support for H.R. 672 – a bill that was introduced earlier this
year by Congressman Bob Filner (D-CA). Also known as the “Military
Environmental Responsibility Act,” the bill seeks to eliminate military
waivers to key environmental laws such as the Clean Air Act, the Endangered
Species Act, the Nuclear Waste Policy Act, and the Marine Mammal Protection
Act.
The Department of Defense is responsible for more than
31,000 cleanup sites on more than 4,600 active and former defense
properties. About one in 10 Americans – nearly 29 million –
live within 10 miles of a military site that is listed as a national priority
for hazardous waste cleanup under the federal Superfund program.
The
proposed law would also apply to the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) which
today has responsibility for nuclear cleanup activities at 21 sites covering
more than two million acres in 13 states and which will require billions of
dollars a year for several more decades.
In
the March 23 letter the groups write: “Unregulated military projects have
placed countless communities, workers, soldiers, and families at increased risk
for cancer and other deadly disease from exposure to military toxins –
the hidden casualties here at home. Even as we write this letter,
contamination caused by munitions production, testing, and disposal is
poisoning our drinking water wells, contaminating the air we breathe,
destroying our lakes, rivers, and fisheries, and polluting our soils and
farmlands.”
“It
is important to insist that the Military Environmental Responsibility Act be
pushed to make a clear statement that no one should be above the
law,” said Evelyn Yates, who lives near Arkansas’ Pine Bluff
Arsenal – one of six Army installations in the United States
that currently stores chemical weapons. “In my community, that is
destroying chemical weapons with open incineration no one seems to be paying
attention but, like my sweet departed mother use to say, it will all come out
in the wash. Will the wash day be five years down the road when we are
all guessing the cause of all the new local diseases?”
“Everyone has to be accountable when they do
wrong. The military should be accountable when thousands of people have
been exposed to toxins,” said Doris Bradshaw, director of Defense Depot
Memphis Tennessee Concerned Citizens Committee and neighbor of a 642-acre Army
site where contamination from mustard and other chemical agents has been found.
“The new law will make the government accountable for health issues that
have been going on for years.”
Among those exposed to toxins at
former military sites are civilian workers. In the windowless
basement of Philadelphia’s
now-closed Defense Personnel Supply, workers making clothing for the Army say
that they were exposed to fumes, insecticides and other environmental
hazards.
"The basement area had no
ventilation or windows," said Mable Mallard, a seamstress who worked at
the factory for 10 years, until it closed in 1994. “People were working
for $5 an hour in unhealthy and unsafe conditions – it was a
sweatshop.”
“The
fox has been watching the hen house,” said Gilbert Sanchez, the director
of Tribal Environmental Watch Alliance and a community leader at the Pueblo of
San Ildefonso in New Mexico. “It is time to address the impacts of DOE facilities
like the Los Alamos National Laboratory that are and have been done for the
military use of nuclear weapons, depleted uranium, waste storage on site, and
poor oversight by the Agency.”
Among
the cosponsors of the bill is Representative Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) whose
district includes the former Badger Army Ammunition Plant. Rural
neighbors of the Badger plant organized Citizens for Safe Water Around Badger
(CSWAB) in 1990 when groundwater contamination from the military base was
detected in nearby drinking water wells. Families there were unknowingly
exposed to carcinogenic solvents in their well water for more than 15
years.
-END-
STATISTICAL REFERENCES:
Office
of the Deputy Under Secretary of Defense, Installations and Environment, Defense Environmental Programs Annual Report to
Congress Fiscal Year 2006.
Peter
Eisler, USA TODAY, Pollution cleanups pit
Pentagon against regulators, March 12, 2004.
United
States Department of Energy, Office of Environmental Management, Report to Congress Status of Environmental Management
Initiatives to Accelerate the Reduction of Environmental Risks and Challenges
Posed by the Legacy of the Cold War, January 2009.
--
Laura Olah,
Executive Director
Citizens for Safe
Water Around Badger
E12629 Weigand's Bay
South
Merrimac, WI 53561
(608)643-3124
Email:
info@cswab.org
Website:
www.cswab.org