[CPEO-MEF] MUNITIONS, REUSE: Vieques - Fish, Wildlife, and Bombs

[Lenny Siegel <lsiegel@cpeo.org>]

Fish, Wildlife, and Bombs: The Struggle to Clean Up Vieques

by Katherine T. McCaffrey
NACLA Report
September-October, 2009



In May 2003, after hundreds of arrests, marches, and constant pickets, 
mass protest forced the U.S. Navy off Vieques, Puerto Rico. Since World 
War II, the navy had maintained one of its key military installations in 
the Western Hemisphere on this 51-square-mile island, located six miles 
off the southeast coast of Puerto Rico. Yet Vieques was also home to 
10,000 U.S. citizens who lived sandwiched between an ammunition depot 
and a military training area. The navy test-fired both land-based and 
naval artillery, as well as small arms. It rehearsed amphibious landing 
exercises, parachute drops, and submarine maneuvers. The navy bombed 
Vieques from air, land, and sea. In the 1980s and 1990s, the navy 
trained an average of 180 days per year and dropped or fired an average 
of 1,464 tons of bombs and explosives annually on Vieques. In 1998, the 
last year before protest interrupted maneuvers, the navy dropped 23,000 
bombs on the island, most of which contained live explosives.

After six decades of intensive military training, residents are 
preoccupied with cleaning up the island. Dangerous levels of cadmium and 
lead appear in the island's crabs. Lead is concentrated in pasture grass 
grazed by horses and cattle. Ordnance occasionally washes ashore. Such 
contamination from heavy metals, and other toxins poses major 
environmental and health concerns. For example, the island's cancer rate 
is 27% higher than the rest of Puerto Rico, raising troubling questions 
about the military's toxic legacy and its short- and long-term impact on 
islanders' health.

....

For the entire article, see
https://nacla.org/node/6098

--


Lenny Siegel
Executive Director, Center for Public Environmental Oversight
a project of the Pacific Studies Center
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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