[CPEO-MEF] RADIATION, VETERANS: "USS Calhoun County sailors dumped thousands of tons of radioactive waste into ocean"

[Lenny Siegel <lsiegel@cpeo.org>]

USS Calhoun County sailors dumped thousands of tons of radioactive  
waste into ocean

William R. Levesque
Tampa Bay Times (FL)
December 20, 2013


They asked the dying Pasco County man about his Navy service a half- 
century before. He kept talking about the steel barrels. They haunted  
him, sea monsters plaguing an old sailor.

"We turned off all the lights," George Albernaz testified at a 2005  
Department of Veterans Affairs hearing, "and … pretend that we were  
broken down and … we would take these barrels and having only steel- 
toed shoes … no protection gear, and proceed to roll these barrels  
into the ocean, 300 barrels at a trip."

Not all of them sank. A few pushed back against the frothing ocean,  
bobbing in the waves like a drowning man. Then shots would ring out  
from a sailor with a rifle at the fantail. And the sea would claim  
the bullet-riddled drum.
...
For up to 15 years after World War II, the crew of Albernaz's ship,  
the USS Calhoun County, dumped thousands of tons of radioactive waste  
into the Atlantic Ocean, often without heeding the simplest health  
precautions, according to Navy documents and Tampa Bay Times  
interviews with more than 50 former crewmen.

...

For the entire article, see
http://www.tampabay.com/news/military/veterans/the-atomic-sailors/ 
2157927

See also
http://www.tampabay.com/news/military/effects-of-dumping-radioactive- 
waste-in-ocean-need-more-study-scientists/2157923
http://www.tampabay.com/news/military/navy-comment-on-the-uss-calhoun- 
county/2157946




--

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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