[CPEO-MEF] GLOBAL: "Can These [Mariana] Islands Survive America’s Military Pivot To Asia?"

[Lenny Siegel <lsiegel@cpeo.org>]

Can These Islands Survive America’s Military Pivot To Asia?
The Mariana Islands are still littered with dangerous debris left over from World War II but now, with an eye toward China, the U.S. wants to vastly increase its military presence there.

BY ANITA HOFSCHNEIDER
Honolulu Civil Beat
December 12, 2016


SAIPAN, Northern Mariana Islands - Tom Pangelinan pushes his way through the tall swordgrass and scraggly trees. There’s no path to get to the rusted fuel tank that towers over him. Bright green vines creep up a ladder leading up to its roof.

Pangelinan gestures to a dark line of oil seeping out of the tank, one of dozens scattered in villages on the island of Saipan in the Western Pacific. Most are within a 10-minute drive of the island’s main tourist district.

“You can still smell it,” he says.

The tank used to hold thousands of gallons of fuel, but after decades of neglect all that’s left is oil sludge mixed with rainwater.

...

For the entire article, see
http://www.civilbeat.org/2016/12/can-these-islands-survive-americas-military-pivot-to-asia/

--

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/Fax: 650/961-8918 
<lsiegel@cpeo.org>
http://www.cpeo.org

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