[CPEO-MEF] MUNITIONS: "Open Burning at U.S. Military Sites Inflames Activists in Nearby Towns"

[Lenny Siegel <lsiegel@cpeo.org>]

Open Burning at U.S. Military Sites Inflames Activists in Nearby Towns

By Dan Ross 
Fair Warning
May 4, 2017

Soon after Erin Card moved to within two miles of the Radford Army Ammunition Plant in Virginia two years ago, she began to notice threads of smoke that occasionally rose above the heavily wooded site. She started asking about the source, and eventually was stunned by what she learned: Toxic explosives were being burned in the open air.

“It just seems crazy to me,” said Card, 36, who lives with her husband and their three young boys.

The open burning and open detonation of hazardous waste explosives is banned in many countries, including Canada, Germany and the Netherlands. Likewise, in this country, private industry long ago was forced to abandon the primitive disposal practice.

But the U.S. military and Department of Energy have been allowed to continue the open burning and detonation of explosives and, in a few cases, even radioactive wastes under a 1980 exemption from the Environmental Protection Agency. The EPA exemption was granted to provide time to develop better disposal techniques. Yet today, the U.S. allows open burning and detonation in at least 39 locations, according to federal data obtained by FairWarning. In the continental U.S., that includes 31 military sites, at least five Department of Energy operations and one private business that handles wastes for the Department of Defense.

…

For the entire article, see
https://www.fairwarning.org/2017/05/open-burning/

--

Lenny Siegel
Executive Director
Center for Public Environmental Oversight
a project of the Pacific Studies Center
P.O. Box 998, Mountain View, CA 94042
Voice/Fax: 650/961-8918 
<lsiegel@cpeo.org>
http://www.cpeo.org

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