Pagan: “We love our island. We don’t want to give it up. This proposal is going to turn it into a wasteland.”

 

 

“We love our island. We don’t want to give it up,” says Jerome Aldan, the mayor of the Northern Mariana Islands. “This proposal is going to turn it into a wasteland.” (David Cloud, Los Angeles Times)

The Navy’s plan to conduct live fire training on Tinian and Pagan islands in the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI) is another recent manifestation of President Obama’s so-called Pacific Pivot (now rebranded the “rebalance to Asia”). Meeting fierce anti-bases protests in Okinawa since the 1995 rape of a 12 year old schoolgirl by US Marines, the US and Japan have tried to relocate the Futenma MCAS to Henoko, Okinawa. This plan has been completely rejected by the vast majority of Okinawans and is now approaching a breaking point with regular civil disobedience on land and sea to protect the coral reef and seagrass habitats favored by the endangered northern Dugong.

Another element of the realignment plan involved moving up to 8000 marines plus their dependents to Guam, the US colony in the Mariana chain.  But strong opposition to the proposal, budget constraints in Congress and inadequate infrastructure on Guam have caused the US to recalibrate its plans. They are now looking at approximately 4000 marines going to Guam, 2500 to Australia on a rotating basis, and 2700 to Hawaiʻi. Additionally, the original plan to build a live fire range in Pagat point in Guam, an important ancient Chamorro cultural site, was blocked by legal and political pressure from the community. So the navy looked north to the CNMI, which is in a semi-colonial status under the U.S. The latest environmental impact statement just released looks at establishing enhanced live fire training on Tinian as well as taking over the northern island of Pagan.

Whereas the CNMI government had been more accepting of military plans in the past, this new proposal has sparked vociferous opposition. Check out the testimony from one of the public hearings.

The struggle there has finally gotten some wider media coverage, such as this piece in the Los Angeles Times “Island of Pagan opposes plan to use it for Marine invasion training” (5/17/2015):

“We love our island. We don’t want to give it up,” said Jerome Aldan, the 40-year-old elected mayor of the Northern Mariana Islands. “This proposal is going to turn it into a wasteland.”

The islanders were relocated to Saipan years ago when the volcano erupted, but now they want to return home.

Pagan is a gem of biodiversity. Biologists have been concerned about rumors that the military wanted to take over the island. Several years ago some UH researchers created a website to draw attention to the ecological resources that would be endangered by military occupation of the island.

The Alternative Zero Coalition is one group fighting the proposed plan.

Our Islands Are Sacred is a group on Facebook based in Guam that is also in solidarity with efforts to protect Tinian and Pagan.

 

Navy Wants to Bomb the Gulf of Alaska?!

Screen_Shot_2014-10-03_at_2.41.24_PM

The Eyak Preservation Council, an organization formed in the aftermath of the Exxon Valdez oil spill, is dedicated to:

grassroots environmental and social change organization dedicated to promoting sustainable communities and protecting and preserving wild salmon habitat and Indigenous culture in the ancestral Eyak homelands of the Prince William Sound and Copper River watersheds.

They are now fighting the Navy which wants to conduct live fire exercises in the Gulf of Alaska where the salmon grow to maturity.

The Navy is planning summer training exercises in the Gulf of Alaska for up to 42 days annually from April to October for a five-year period.

These “war games” will involve use of high-frequency and mid-frequency sonar for submarine exercises, plus a wide variety of live weapons and explosives – bombs, heavy deck guns, torpedoes, missiles, large carrier strikes (ships will be blown up & sunk; none of which will ever be recovered).

Click HERE to Sign their petition

And visit the Eyak Preservation Council website: http://www.eyakpreservationcouncil.org/navy-training-facts/ and see the links to letters on the left side of the page or call: 907-424-5890.

 

 

Army training burns 450 acres, Navy unexploded ordance

On October 10, Army training activity caused a brush fire that burned for 18 days and scorched more than 450 acres of the Waiʻanae mountains. The column of thick blackish brown smoke could be seen all the way from Honolulu.  In the Kona winds, the smoke blanketed the north shore for nearly a week.

The news reported that the fire was “100% contained” on Monday, 10/28/2013. The army claims that no homes or endangered species were threatened by the fires:

The fire on Army and Dole Food Co. property has burned about 450 acres of brush land but posed no threat to facilities or endangered species, Army spokesman Dennis Drake said.

However it is impossible to know for certain what impacts the fire may have had on the ecosystem or on Native Hawaiian cultural sites until a thorough biological and cultural survey can be conducted. Furthermore, the fire could have long term negative impacts on native ecosystems.

The Waiʻanae mountains is an endangered species hot spot, with some extremely rare species found no where else in the world. The more pernicious impact is the way that fires create space for invasive weeds to aggressively spread and transform the ecosystem in lasting ways. These weeds eventually can overtake native forests that may have been spared from the direct impact of the fire, but may succumb to the altered landscape in the future.

Līhuʻe (the location of the Army Schofield training range) was an important cultural and political center for Oʻahu chiefs. There are hundreds of cultural sites in the impact zone alone. It is unclear what cultural sites may have been affected by the fire.

In addition to respiratory problems caused by particulate matter (smoke particles and ash), contaminants in the training range, including explosives, energetics, lead and depleted uranium can be mobilized by fires.  There has been a reported increase in health problems in the surrounding area according to Hawaii News Now:

Hawaii News Now – KGMB and KHNL

The brushfire that burned on Schofield Barracks property has been 100% contained.  However the fire, which burned 450 acres of land, caused headaches for residents of central Oahu.

Although the fire has never threatened any homes, it has proved to be a big concern for many residents of Wahiawa.

The reason is all the smoke that has drifted into town over the past six days.

“There has been an uptick in the number of patients coming in with respiratory complaints” said Doctor Thomas Forney, the Director of the Emergency Department at Wahiawa General Hospital.

Meanwhile, the AP reports (10.29.2013) that a Navy contractor Cape Environmental Management Inc. will detonate unexploded munitions dredged from the sediment in Ke Awalau o Puʻuloa (Pearl Harbor):

The Naval Facilities Engineering Command said Monday a contractor will destroy the munitions using controlled detonations at a safe location on the Waipio Peninsula.

The article suggests that the ordnance may be “from the 1941 Japanese bombing and the explosion of a landing ship in West Lock in 1944.”

But other ordnance has been discovered in the channel at Puʻuloa that came from U.S. training activities.

Toxic “Rainbow” across the Pacific: New Information Revealed About Agent Orange

Today is the 67th anniversary of the U.S. atomic bombing of Nagasaki.  Rebecca Solnit wrote on Facebook:

In 1995 a woman who survived the bombing of Nagasaki (67 years ago today) came to San Francisco to tell her story. She spoke so slowly I was able to write much of her talk down:

The city was a flat sea in flames
and the dust from the sky
is complete
Sky is black

[. . .]

[man blackened exiting train, frozen in place, inside the train sitting there–of courses all dead, black burned]
It was so hot
Nagasaki is so hot.

But we can’t make it
We are so sick
Infection from nail, spent one night in bamboo then decide to go back to grandmother’s home
The Americans coming so we [young girls] all have to cut hair
but I no cut hair

Every time you comb like this hair comes out
gum start losing teeth start losing
I was so skinny, my grandmother could pick it [me?] up
My cousins started dying one by one
They die
They didn’t have big scar, they die from radiation symptoms
They start vomiting
It is black, black
The plutonium in Nagasaki is different
Whatever comes out is black.

Another horror of war and militarization has lately been on my mind and in the news: Agent Orange.  As Beverly Keever revealed years ago “University vulnerable to pitfalls of secret experiments” (March 27, 2005), Hawaiʻi has the dubious distinction of being one of the places where Agent Orange was developed and tested under the cover of agricultural research.  Two UH researchers who were doused by Agent Orange during field tests later developed cancer  and tried to sue for compensation.  There is also an Agent Orange spill site on Kauaʻi near the Wailua river.

Oshita and Fraticelli marked their bulldozers with flags to serve as targets and stayed there while the planes swooped down to spray the defoliants. “When the plane came to spray, someone had to guide him,” Oshita told a reporter in a Page 1 report in the campus newspaper, Ka Leo O Hawaii, on Feb. 3, 1986. “We were the ones.”

Testing was done without warning UH employees or the nearby Kapaa community even though in 1962, just months before being assassinated, President Kennedy was told that Agent Orange could cause adverse health effects, U.S. court documents show. And a 1968 test report written by four UH agronomists said that on Kauai Agent Orange, alone or combined with Agent Pink, Purple or Blue, was effective and “obviously may also be lethal.”

When the testing finished in 1968, five 55-gallon steel drums and a dozen gallon cans partially filled with the toxic chemicals were buried on a hilltop overlooking a reservoir. There they remained until the mid-1980s when the Ka Leo reporter’s questions led to their being excavated, supposedly for shipment to a licensed hazardous waste facility. They left behind levels of dioxin in some soil samples of more than five times normal cleanup standards.

The barrels were then placed in a Matson shipping container. There, instead of being shipped out of state as promised, they sat for another decade. Then, in 1997, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the state Department of Health discovered that UH had failed to dispose properly of the hazardous materials and included this infraction along with a Big Island one in a $1.8 million fine against the institution. In April 2000, the barrels were finally shipped out of state.

Oshita and Fraticelli have since died. A year after his Agent Orange work, Oshita was diagnosed with liver dysfunction, bladder cancer, diabetes, chronic hepatitis and a severe skin disease called chloracne. Fraticelli died in April 1981 from lung and kidney cancer; he also had bladder cancer and a brain tumor, court documents indicate.

Today, the AP reported that the U.S. is finally planning to address Agent Orange in Vietnam –  “U.S. plan to clean up Agent Orange dioxin ‘better late than never’” (August 9, 2012):

Vo Duoc fights back tears while sharing the news that broke his heart: A few days ago he received test results confirming he and 11 family members have elevated levels of dioxin lingering in their blood.

The family lives in a twostory house near a former U.S. military base in Danang where the defoliant Agent Orange was stored during the Vietnam War, which ended nearly four decades ago. Duoc, 58, sells steel for a living and has diabetes, while his wife battles breast cancer and their daughter has remained childless after suffering repeated miscarriages. For years, Duoc thought the ailments were unrelated, but after seeing the blood tests he now suspects his family unwittingly ingested dioxin from Agent Orange-contaminated fish, vegetables and well water.

Dioxin, a persistent chemical linked to cancer, birth defects and other disabilities, has seeped into Vietnam’s soils and watersheds, creating a lasting war legacy that remains a thorny issue between the former foes. Washington has been slow to respond, but today the United States for the first time will begin cleaning up dioxin from Agent Orange that was stored at the former military base, now part of Danang’s airport.

The article continued:

Over the past five years, Congress has appropriated about $49 million for environmental remediation and about $11 million to help people living with disabilities in Vietnam regardless of cause. Experts have identified three former U.S. air bases – in Danang in central Vietnam and the southern locations of Bien Hoa and Phu Cat – as hotspots where Agent Orange was mixed, stored and loaded onto planes.

The U.S. military dumped some 20 million gallons (75 million liters) of Agent Orange and other herbicides on about a quarter of former South Vietnam between 1962 and 1971.

The defoliant decimated about 5 million acres (2 million hectares) of forest – roughly the size of Massachusetts – and another 500,000 acres (202,000 hectares) of crops.

After years of denying veterans’ medical compensation for Agent Orange contamination, much less the environmental health concerns of Vietnamese people, why the change in tune?  One possible explanation is that the U.S. is seeking closer ties with Vietnam (including negotiating the use of ports for U.S. war ships) in order to counter the growing power of China:

Military ties have also strengthened, with Vietnam looking to the U.S. amid rising tensions with China in the disputed South China Sea, which is believed to be rich in oil and gas reserves and is crossed by vital shipping lanes.

Although Washington remains a vocal critic of Vietnam’s human rights record, it also views the country as a key ally in its push to re-engage militarily in the Asia-Pacific region. The U.S. says maintaining peace and freedom of navigation in the sea is in its national interest.

But, the U.S. has not even acknowledged the use or storage of Agent Orange in Okinawa.  Jon Mitchell reveals in the Japan Times “25,000 barrels of Agent Orange kept on Okinawa, U.S. Army document says” (August 7, 2012). Those barrels were later shipped to Kalama (Johnston Atoll) 800 miles from O’ahu and once a part of the Hawaiian Kingdom:

During the Vietnam War, 25,000 barrels of Agent Orange were stored on Okinawa, according to a recently uncovered U.S. Army report. The barrels, thought to contain over 5.2 million liters of the toxic defoliant, had been brought to Okinawa from Vietnam before apparently being taken to Johnston Island in the Pacific Ocean, where the U.S. military is known to have incinerated its stocks of Agent Orange in 1977.

The army report is the first time the U.S. military has acknowledged the presence of these chemicals on Okinawa — and it appears to contradict repeated denials from the Pentagon that Agent Orange was ever on the island. The discovery of the report has prompted a group of 10 U.S. veterans, who claim they were sickened by these chemicals on Okinawa, to demand a formal inquiry from the U.S. Senate.

The army report, published in 2003, is titled “An Ecological Assessment of Johnston Atoll.” Outlining the military’s efforts to clean up the tiny island that the U.S. used throughout the Cold War to store and dispose of its stockpiles of biochemical weapons, the report states, “In 1972, the U.S. Air Force brought about 25,000 55-gallon (208 liter) drums of the chemical Herbicide Orange (HO) to Johnston Island that originated from Vietnam and was stored on Okinawa.”

In a companion article “Poisons in the Pacific: Guam, Okinawa and Agent Orange” (August 7, 2012) he describes how the use and storage of Agent Orange on Guam as well as Okinawa has taken a heavy toll on many of the GIs who were exposed to the deadly toxins:

Within days of starting the assignment, Foster developed pustules and boils all over his body that were so severe he bled through his bed linen. Then during the following years he fell ill with a litany of sicknesses, including Parkinson’s and ischemic heart disease, that he believes were caused by the highly toxic herbicides he was ordered to spray. Foster also contends that Agent Orange’s dioxins — long proven to damage successive generations’ health — have also affected his daughter, who had to undergo cancer treatment as a teenager, and his grandchild, who was born with 12 fingers, 12 toes and a heart murmur.

News photo

Toxic legacy: U.S. Air Force veteran Leroy Foster holds his granddaughter in a picture taken not long after her birth in 2010. She was born with 12 fingers and toes, as well as a heart murmur — abnormalities that Foster believes are a consequence of his exposure to Agent Orange on Guam in the late 1960s. COURTESY OF LEROY FOSTER

[. . . ]

According to Edward Jackson, a sergeant with the 43rd Transportation Squadron assigned to Guam in the early 1970s, these herbicides were a common sight. “Andersen Air Force Base had a huge stockpile of Agent Orange and other herbicides. There were many, many thousands of drums. I used to make trips with them to the navy base for shipment by sea,” Jackson told The Japan Times.

Knowing what we do now about the toxicity of these chemicals, it is easy to imagine that service members handled them wearing protective clothing. But for years the military and manufacturers suppressed the research on their dangers. “They told us Agent Orange was so safe that you could brush your teeth with it,” says Stanton.

Not only did this lackadaisical attitude apply to the usage of these herbicides, it also applied to their disposal. Just like on Okinawa, where veterans have claimed Agent Orange was buried on Hamby Air Field (current-day Chatan Town), Kadena Air Base and Marine Corps Air Station Futenma, former service members on Guam say they engaged in similar practices.

According to Jackson, the barrels of herbicides were sometimes damaged during transit so they were dumped on Andersen Air Force Base. “I would back my truck up to a small cliff that sloped away towards the Pacific Ocean. I personally threw away about 25 drums. Each individual drum was anywhere from almost empty to almost full,” Jackson explains. 

In the 1990s, the U.S. government cracked down on such methods, and after conducting environmental tests on the site where Jackson dumped the barrels, that area was found to be so severely polluted that it was listed for urgent cleanup by the Environmental Protection Agency. Across the tiny island, almost 100 similarly tainted sites were identified, including one where dioxin contamination in the soil of 19,000 parts per million (compared to a recognized safe level of 1,000 parts pertrillion) made it one of the most toxic places on the planet. Further alarming residents was the proximity of many of these sites to the Northern Guam Lens, the aquifer that supplies the island with its drinking water.

How did the military rationalize this kind of environmental practice?

The heavy loss of G.I. blood on both islands imbued in many U.S. leaders a sense of entitlement to the hard-won territories. Following the end of World War II, the islands were gradually transformed into two of the most militarized places on the planet — Guam became the “Tip of the Spear” and Okinawa the “Keystone of the Pacific.”

[. . .]

The fates of Guam and Okinawa have been entwined in the Gordian knot of the planned relocation of thousands of U.S. Marines within the Pacific theater. Associate professor Natividad believes that this plan has made Guam’s leaders reluctant to push the Pentagon for full disclosure about its poisoning of the island. “Our former governor was too afraid of making waves with Washington for fear of jeopardizing the realignment. Our current governor is more confident but even if he pressured Washington for an admission, they’d just send him a letter saying that they’ve cleaned up the contaminated sites.”

While it now seems clear that America’s reasons for bringing Agent Orange to Guam and Okinawa were rooted in the Cold War past, Washington’s increasingly implausible refusals to admit to the presence of these toxic substances on either island are tightly interwoven with its 21st century military strategy for the region.

“We veterans have become a political pawn between the U.S. and Japan,” says Jackson, the former air force sergeant. “We’re an army waiting to die.”

What about the Agent Orange, chemical weapons and nuclear waste on Kalama (Johnston Atoll)?

Ed Rampell wrote “The military’s mess: Johnston Atoll, the army’s ‘model’ chemical disposal facility, is an environmental disaster” (PDF) (January 1996):

According to “Mr. D.,” a defense industry source knowledgeable about JACADS, speaking on condition of anonymity, a nuke “went off the launch pad and cracked … The missile did not go off, but it cracked the casing, releasing plutonium.” The radioactive area, he said, is “still offlimits via a chain link fence.” In what amounts to the world’s first and largest plutonium mining project, the U.S. is spending $10 million to separate contaminated soil at the atomic atoll.

Plutonium is not the only lethal substance to leak into Johnston. In the 1970s, the U.S. shipped to the atoll millions of gallons of dioxin-contaminated Agent Orange, the birth defect-causing defoliant used in Vietnam. According to Mr. D., “The Agent Orange was stored in 55-gallon drums, which rusted, and the Agent Orange leaked into the soil.” This still-contaminated area is also fenced off. According to Wilkes, the herbicide was finally burned in 1976 on the Vulcanus II incinerator ship, which he calls “notoriously inefficient.” He adds, “Here, to an extreme degree, the U.S. military does anything that is too unpopular, too dangerous and too secret to do elsewhere in the Pacific.”

See http://guamagentorange.info/johnston_island

Two news stories on recent Makua court ruling

Here are two articles citing the recent court ruling that enjoins the Army from conducting live fire training in Makua until it has completed marine environmental impact studies as required by a 2001 settlement with Malama Makua.   The Honolulu Star Advertiser reported “Army must conduct more studies on live-fire training at Makua” (June 21, 2012).

The AP reported “Judge wants updated Makua Valley studies” (June 22, 2012):

No branch of the military has trained in Makua with live ammunition since 2004, after the Army failed to complete a court-ordered environmental study on the effects of decades of military training. The Army and its opponents have been embroiled in a decade-long legal dispute over how the military may use the valley.

Many Native Hawaiians consider the valley sacred. Others object because the environment includes more than 50 endangered plant and animals. Lawsuits came after the training exercises led to multiple fires in the 4,190-acre Waianae Coast valley.

But this court ruling will not bar all Army training in Makua, and the slow easing out of Makua may be deliberate misdirection from the enormous military (Army and Marine Corps) at Pohakuloa on Hawai’i island:

Army officials say the military branch will abide by the order and use the military reservations in different ways, and decide whether to resume live-fire training once the studies are complete.

“The Army will continue to prepare soldiers through a training regimen that does not employ live fire while studies are completed, the results are analyzed and the appropriate level of National Environmental Policy Act planning is completed,” the Army said in a statement.

Last year, the top Army commander in the Pacific told The Associated Press he would need to keep his options open on Makua in case the construction of new ranges at Schofield Barracks and Pohakuloa Training Area is delayed.

In other words, the Army is holding Makua hostage while it expands on Hawai’i island.

 

Court Confirms No Live-Fire Training at Mākua until Army Completes Missing Studies

For immediate release: June 21, 2012

Contact:

David Henkin, Earthjustice, (808) 599-2436, ext. 6614, dhenkin@earthjustice.org

Sparky Rodrigues, Mālama Mākua, (808) 352-0059

Court Confirms No Live-Fire Training at Mākua until Army Completes Missing Studies

Army ordered to report on progress in studying marine contamination, threats to cultural sites

HONOLULU – Yesterday, U.S. District Chief Judge Susan Oki Mollway issued an order confirming that no live-fire training may take place at Mākua Military Reservation (MMR) on O‘ahu until the Army completes new studies of potential military contamination of marine resources at Mākua and new surveys of Native Hawaiian cultural sites at risk of destruction from military training.  Judge Mollway previously found that the Army’s failure to carry out these studies violated two court-ordered settlements with Mālama Mākua, a Wai‘anae Coast community group that first sued the Army in 1998 to secure comprehensive review of the impacts of military training at MMR.

“Last year, the Army said it wanted to keep open the option of conducting live-fire training at Mākua,” said Earthjustice attorney David Henkin, who represents Mālama Mākua.  “Yesterday’s order makes clear that the court will hold the Army to the promise it made in 2001 that it would first complete these important studies before any live-fire training can occur.”

In October 2010, Judge Mollway determined that the Army violated its obligation under a 2001 settlement with Mālama Mākua to complete comprehensive subsurface archaeological surveys to identify cultural sites that could be damaged or destroyed if mortar rounds, artillery shells, and other ordnance go astray during training exercises, as they have in the past.  Despite the passage of nearly two years since that ruling, the Army failed to take any steps to carry out the required surveys.  In yesterday’s order, Judge Mollway instructed the Army to file quarterly progress reports to “update the court on the progress of these surveys.”

The Army also must report on its progress on studies of contamination of limu (seaweed) and other marine resources in Mākua’s nearshore waters on which Wai‘anae Coast families rely for subsistence.  In her October 2010 order and in a separate order following a June 2011 trial, Judge Mollway concluded the Army had violated the terms of a 2007 settlement with Mālama Mākua when it failed to conduct these marine studies.

“We have been waiting over a decade for the Army to make good on its promises to conduct meaningful studies to let us know if military training at Mākua is poisoning the food that we put on the table to feed our keiki (children) and to identify cultural sites that military training threatens to destroy,” said Mālama Mākua president Sparky Rodrigues.  “We’re pleased that the court will be now be keeping tabs on the Army to make sure we finally get accurate information about the harm to public health and cultural sites that military training at Mākua can cause.”

                                                                                                                                                           

Mālama Mākua is a non-profit, community organization based on the Wai‘anae Coast of O‘ahu.  Formed in 1992 to oppose the Army’s open burn/open detonation permit application to the EPA, Mālama Mākua has continued to monitor military activities at Mākua and has participated in a number of community initiatives to care for the land and resources at Mākua.

Earthjustice is the nation’s leading non-profit environmental law firm. The Mid-Pacific Office opened in Honolulu in 1988 and represents environmental, Native Hawaiian, and community organizations. Earthjustice is the only non-profit environmental law firm in Hawai‘i and the Mid-Pacific and does not charge clients for its services.

 

U.S. court dismisses Puerto Ricans’ suit over arms testing

In a very bad ruling for Vieques residents seeking just compensation for environmental health damages due to the Navy bombing of Vieques for over fifty years, Reuters reported “U.S. court dismisses Puerto Ricans’ suit over arms testing” (February 14, 2012):

Puerto Rican residents lost a bid on Tuesday to force the U.S. government to recognize the health effects on the local population of testing of weapons and experimenting with chemicals on the island of Vieques for decades.

A U.S. appeals court in Boston ruled that the federal government has immunity from any lawsuit over its actions.

For about six decades after World War II, the U.S. Navy used a portion of Vieques as a weapons-testing ground and firing range, detonating bombs and experimenting with chemicals from napalm to Agent Orange and depleted uranium.The military abandoned the base in 2003 under political pressure. Juanita Sanchez, a resident of the island, sued on behalf of her daughter and some 7,000 others in 2007. The suit accused the U.S. military of causing illnesses among inhabitants, including a 30 percent higher cancer rate compared to Puerto Rico’s main island.

But the appeals court agreed with a lower court that had dismiss the case. Courts should be cautious about interfering with the exercise of military authority, Chief Judge Sandra Lynch wrote on behalf of two members of the three-judge panel.

The third judge, Juan Torruella, who comes from Puerto Rico, issued a vehement dissent. The government was aware of the toxic impact of its activities in 1979, he wrote. Its decision not to warn residents was not an exercise of judgment entitled to immunity, he added.

“Nowhere does the medieval concept of ‘the King can do no wrong’ underlying the doctrine of sovereign immunity sound more hollow and abusive than when an imperial power applies it to a group of helpless subjects. This cannot be a proper role for the United States of America,” Torruella wrote. (Emphasis added)

All three judges agreed that the suit raised serious health concerns that should be brought to the attention of Congress. The opinion included an instruction for the court clerk to submit copies of the decision to leaders of the House of Representatives and Senate.

So military environmental racism rolls on, from Puerto Rico to Wai’anae.  Some Valentines.

EPA: toxic chemical found in Wahiawa and Aiea aquifers is a “likely human carcinogen”

The EPA released a new health assessment for the toxic contaminant tetrachloroethylene – also known as perchloroethylene, or perc, as a “likely human carcinogen.”  PERC is a contaminant found at military sites in Hawai’i including the Schofield / Wahiawa aquifer (a former Superfund site) and the former Aiea Laundry site, a Navy superfund site across the street from Aiea Elementary School and next to a Catholic Church.

CONTACT:

Latisha Petteway (News Media Only)

petteway.latisha@epa.gov

202-564-3191

202-564-4355

 

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

February 10, 2012

EPA Releases Final Health Assessment for Tetrachloroethylene (Perc)

Public health protections remain in place

WASHINGTON – Today the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) posted the final health assessment for tetrachloroethylene – also known as perchloroethylene, or perc – to EPA’s Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS) database. Perc is a chemical solvent widely used in the dry cleaning industry. It is also used in the cleaning of metal machinery and to manufacture some consumer products and other chemicals. Confirming longstanding scientific understanding and research, the final assessment characterizes perc as a “likely human carcinogen.” The assessment provides estimates for both cancer and non-cancer effects associated with exposure to perc over a lifetime.

EPA does not believe that wearing clothes dry cleaned with perc will result in exposures which pose a risk of concern. EPA has already taken several significant actions to reduce exposure to perc. EPA has clean air standards for dry cleaners that use perc, including requirements that will phase-out the use of perc by dry cleaners in residential buildings by December 21, 2020. EPA also set limits for the amount of perc allowed in drinking water and levels for cleaning up perc at Superfund sites throughout the country, which will be updated in light of the IRIS assessment.

“The perc health assessment released today will provide valuable information to help protect people and communities from exposure to perc in soil, water and air,” said Paul Anastas, assistant administrator for EPA’s Office of Research and Development. “This assessment emphasizes the value of the IRIS database in providing strong science to support government officials as they make decisions to protect the health of the American people.”

The toxicity values reported in the perc IRIS assessment will be considered in:

  • Establishing cleanup levels at the hundreds of Superfund sites where perc is a contaminant
  • Revising EPA’s Maximum Contaminant Level for perc as part of the carcinogenic volatile organic compounds group in drinking water, as described in the agency’s drinking water strategy
  • Evaluating whether to propose additional limits on the emissions of perc into the atmosphere, since perc is considered a hazardous air pollutant under the Clean Air Act

The assessment replaces the 1988 IRIS assessment for perc and for the first time includes a hazard characterization for cancer effects. This assessment has undergone several levels of rigorous, independent peer review including: agency review, interagency review, public comment, and external peer review by the National Research Council. All major review comments have been addressed.

EPA continues to strengthen IRIS as part of an ongoing effort to ensure the best possible science is used to protect human health and the environment. In May 2009, EPA streamlined the IRIS process to increase transparency, ensure the timely publication of assessments, and reinforce independent review. In July 2011, EPA announced further changes to strengthen the IRIS program in response to recommendations from the National Academy of Sciences. EPA’s peer review process is designed to elicit the strongest possible critique to ensure that each final IRIS assessment reflects sound, rigorous science.

More information on the perc IRIS assessment:http://www.epa.gov/iris/subst/0106.htm

More information on perc: http://epa.gov/oppt/existingchemicals/pubs/perchloroethylene_fact_sheet.html

More information on IRIS: http://www.epa.gov/IRIS

EPA: Pohakuloa Training Area among the top 10 polluters in Hawai’i

The Hawaii Tribune Herald reported that the Pohakuloa Training Area made the EPA’s top 10 polluters list for Hawai’i in 2010:

A Hilo power plant and the Army’s Pohakuloa Training Area made the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s newly released list of the state’s top 10 industrial polluters for 2010.

[…]

The Army’s training area and range facility on Saddle Road ranked ninth among reported polluters in the state, with 96,397 pounds of chemicals reported. PTA was not on the top 10 list for 2009. According to data on the EPA’s website, all of the waste is metals or metal compounds, with 39,725 pounds classified as PBTs, or persistent, bioaccumulative and toxic chemicals. Both categories include lead.

A call early Thursday afternoon to Army Garrison Hawaii’s public affairs office was not returned in time for this story.

Six of the top 10 industrial polluters were in Honolulu County, all located in Leeward Oahu. The perennial top polluter, Hawaiian Electric Co.’s Kahe Point generating station near Kapolei is again atop the list with 550,651 pounds of pollutants, and joint Navy and Air Force Facility Pearl Harbor-Hickam is second, with 420,761 pounds. Two other Leeward Oahu power plants, the Waiau generating station in Pearl City and the AES facility in Kapolei, ranked fourth and seventh, respectively.

Pearl Harbor-Hickam Restoration Advisory Board (RAB)

The Pearl Harbor-Hickam Restoration Advisory Board will meet tomorrow at 7:00 pm at the ‘Aiea Library.   The Pearl Harbor Sediment Draft Feasibility Study should be of interest to many. It will deal with proposals for cleaning up the contamination in the sediment of Ke Awalau o Pu’uloa, which is substantial.  Here’s the invitation.  The meetings are open to the public:

Aloha,

This is a reminder of the Pearl Harbor-Hickam Restoration Advisory Board (RAB) meeting on November 17, 2011 to discuss three presentations:

  • Pearl Harbor Sediment Draft Feasibility Study, Pearl Harbor, Hawaii
  • Time Critical Removal Action for the Sandblast Grit Disposal Sites, Waipio Peninsula
  • Transport Yard Draft Remedial Investigation Work Plan Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard Intermediate Maintenance Facility

Date: November 17, 2011 (Thursday)

Time: 7 p.m.

Location: Aiea Elementary School Cafeteria (see attached map), 99-370 Moanalua Road, Aiea, HI 96701

Mahalo,

Rachel Gilhooly

Geologist

Environment, West Region, Pacific District

D 808.356.5343