[CPEO-MEF] CHEMWEAPONS, MUNITIONS: "Government Won't Remove Thousands of Tons of Potentially Toxic Chemical Weapons Dumped Off US Coasts"

[Lenny Siegel <lsiegel@cpeo.org>]

Government Won't Remove Thousands of Tons of Potentially Toxic Chemical Weapons Dumped Off US Coasts

By Daniel Ross
Truthout
October 03, 2017


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By 1972, when the US officially ended its practice of dumping munitions out to sea, tens of thousands of tons of chemical weapons, conventional munitions and radioactive wastes had been disposed of in the Atlantic Ocean, the Pacific Ocean, and the Gulf of Mexico at sites up and down the nation's coastlines, including Alaska, Hawaii and the Caribbean.

In the decades that followed, little was done to reckon with the problems these sites presented. Until finally, in 2006, Congress directed the Department of Defense (DoD) to conduct a multi-pronged study to finally figure out just how many chemical and conventional munitions were slowly degrading in US coastal waters, and whether it was feasible to retrieve these munitions from their watery graves. Congress also ordered the DoD to examine the ecological impact from toxic emissions as these munitions slowly corrode under water, and their potential to cause harm to the people who use the oceans -- like fishermen, whose nets become entangled with old obsolete bombs as they dredge the sea floor.

In a report to Congress in November of last year, the DoD made its final determination. From both an ecological and safety perspective, it was deemed best to "leave sea-disposed munitions in place," the department found. It stated that removing or cleaning up munitions sea-disposal dump sites would have "more serious effects on marine life and the ocean environment than would leaving them in place."

…

For the entire article, see
http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/42135-government-won-t-remove-thousands-of-tons-of-potentially-toxic-chemical-weapons-dumped-off-us-coasts

--

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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