Vieques

The Huffington Post
Brendan DeMelle
Freelance writer and researcher
Posted: September 29, 2009 03:20 PM

New Justice Department Policy Signals Hope for Justice in Vieques

The Justice Department announced a much-needed new policy last week that will impose strict limits on government agencies’ use of the state secrets privilege in order to block lawsuits for national security reasons. Under the new rules, any military or espionage agency wishing to assert the privilege in order to dismiss a lawsuit or restrict evidence in court must meet a higher standard of proof that it would pose “significant harm” to national security. The new policy also requires the approval of Attorney General Eric Holder for any attempt to use the privilege in court.

“This policy is an important step toward rebuilding the public’s trust in the government’s use of this privilege while recognizing the imperative need to protect national security. It sets out clear procedures that will provide greater accountability and ensure the state secrets privilege is invoked only when necessary and in the narrowest way possible,” Holder said in a statement announcing the policy.

Reining in the use of this privilege, which was abused heavily during the Bush administration, is a step in the right direction. For far too long, the government has hidden behind disingenuous claims of national security threats in order to deny justice for those injured or wronged by our own military. The new DOJ policy indicates that the Obama Justice Department understands this problem and is working to correct it.

This policy shift may also provide a ray of hope for the residents of Vieques, who are suing the federal government over the U.S. Navy’s 60-year bombardment of their island for training purposes. The Navy bombing left behind a toxic legacy of contamination and disease that hampers the island’s economy and continuously threatens the health of its residents.

Attorneys representing more than 7,000 citizens and the municipality of Vieques have presented extensive scientific evidence of the harmful impacts on the environment and on the food supply of the fish-loving islanders. They have presented ample evidence of the health crisis caused by the contamination left behind by the Navy, including astronomical rates of cancer, birth defects and other pollution-related illnesses which plague residents. The damage done to the island’s tourism-driven economy is also readily apparent.

Public outrage over the government’s neglect of the plight of Vieques residents has compelled both houses of the Puerto Rican legislature and a special committee of the United Nations to pass resolutions demanding justice for the people of Vieques and a thorough clean-up of their island.

Despite all of this evidence and public pressure, there is one major obstacle standing in the way of justice for the people of Vieques – the government’s use of an archaic  “sovereign immunity” defense – which would block the lawsuit on national security grounds if accepted by the trial judge currently deliberating the case. This outlandish use of the national security defense was initiated by the Bush administration and, so far, upheld by the Obama Justice Department.

While the new DOJ policy implementing more rigorous review of the government’s use of national security claims will cut down on such abuse going forward, Attorney General Holder must intervene in the Vieques case to make sure that his legacy is not tarnished by a prime example of such abuse happening right now. Dropping the sovereign immunity defense in the Vieques case would demonstrate this administration’s commitment to ending the overzealous use of national defense claims.

The government should immediately retract its foolish sovereign immunity defense in the Vieques case and allow the people of Vieques a fair shake with justice. Better yet, the Justice Department could settle the matter now, allowing the expedited cleanup of the island to commence and the economic and physical impacts endured by the islanders to begin to be remedied.

There is no acceptable excuse for the government’s delay in providing relief for Vieques. President Obama promised such remedies in a letter to the people of Puerto Rico in February 2008. The Puerto Rican House and Senate have both recognized that the U.S. v. Sanchez lawsuit – in which the government is claiming sovereign immunity – provides an excellent mechanism for the government to settle and provide remedies to the people of Vieques.

Six decades of bombing trashed this once-pristine paradise, and it is up to the Obama Justice Department to make amends with the victims who have sacrificed greatly for this nation by enduring the Navy’s bombardment and ongoing contamination.

Attorney General Holder must act now to correct this injustice.

I write to formally request what I have asked in meetings and conversations over past months: the Environmental Quality Board (PR) not authorize the open burning of vegetation in Vieques proposed by the US Navy. This would provoke irreparable damage to the health and well being of Vieques residents, since it is widely known that the vegetation in question, located in the Live Impact Area, is contaminated with toxic chemical substances and materials that represent a threat to human health.

It is worth emphasizing that the Navy plans are contrary to the laws and regulations that protect the environment and health in Puerto Rico. For this reason the only way the Navy can carry out these acts is if the EQB approves an exemption to 105 regulations that prohibit this type of open burning. The EPA will only enter into this issue to evaluate the Navy burn if approved by the EQB.

As Mayor of Vieques, I request this exemption and exception to the regulations not be authorized. I ask for total fulfillment of the laws and regulations that protect our environment and our people, to not allow the Navy to continue to effect the health of Vieques people, especially considering the serious health problems resulting from decades of Navy bombing with all types of toxic and chemical arms, including Napalm and depleted uranium.

The damage to Viequenses health as a result of military practices by the US Navy has been documented by several Puerto Ricana and US scientists and by medical testing on a large number of Viequenses who show presence of heavy metals in abnormally high levels. As examples we cite recent declarations by Dr. John Wargo, Dr. James Poner, Dr. Arturo Massol-Deya y la Dra. Carmen Ortiz Roque, summarizing the relationship between Navy use of heavy metals, toxics and chemical agents in Vieques and the negative effects on the health of its  inhabitants. We include copy of these sworn affidavits.

As you are aware, several Representatives fro the US Congress have expressed concern about the health crisis here that resulted from UN Navy practices and have ordered the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease  Registry (ATSDR) to reexamine their Vieques studies done more than six years ago that minimized Navy’s impact on Viequenses’ health and that given the overwhelming evidence about causal relationships between military toxics and the health crisis, the case should be reopened for a new look, action currently ongoing.

Lastly, the present petition for the EQB not to authorize proposed open burning in Vieques is not just the position of the Mayor of Vieques. The same position has been expressed by the Vieques Municipal Legislature as well as several civic and community organizations in Vieques and elsewhere. Therefore, I am confident the agency you direct will adhere to the laws and regulations that protect our environment and people and deny the US Navy’s petition to burn lands and vegetation on Vieques.

Cordially,

Evelyn Delerme Camacho

Mayor

https://nacla.org/node/6098

Fish, Wildlife, and Bombs: The Struggle to Clean Up Vieques
by Katherine T. McCaffrey

In May 2003, after hundreds of arrests, marches, and constant pickets, mass protest forced the U.S. Navy off Vieques, Puerto Rico.1

Since World War II, the navy had maintained one of its key military installations in the Western Hemisphere on this 51-square-mile island, located six miles off the southeast coast of Puerto Rico. Yet Vieques was also home to 10,000 U.S. citizens who lived sandwiched between an ammunition depot and a military training area. The navy test-fired both land-based and naval artillery, as well as small arms. It rehearsed amphibious landing exercises, parachute drops, and submarine maneuvers. The navy bombed Vieques from air, land, and sea. In the 1980s and 1990s, the navy trained an average of 180 days per year and dropped or fired an average of 1,464 tons of bombs and explosives annually on Vieques.2 In 1998, the last year before protest interrupted maneuvers, the navy dropped 23,000 bombs on the island, most of
which contained live explosives.3

After six decades of intensive military training, residents are preoccupied with cleaning up the island. Dangerous levels of cadmium and lead appear in the island’s crabs. Lead is concentrated in pasture grass grazed by horses and cattle. Ordnance occasionally washes ashore. Such contamination from heavy metals, and other toxins poses major environmental and health concerns. For example, the island’s cancer rate is 27% higher than the rest of Puerto Rico, raising troubling questions about the military’s toxic legacy and its short- and long-term impact on islanders’ health.

Cleanup, however, has been stymied. When the navy left Vieques, the majority of its 18,000-acre landholding was transferred to the U.S. Department of Interior, designated a wildlife refuge, and put under control of the U.S. Department of Fish and Wildlife. Fish and Wildlife’s stewardship of this vast expanse of former base land has created a paradoxical situation in which the same terrain that was bombed 180 days a year, that is littered with both spent shells and live bombs, that is pockmarked with bomb craters and toxic-waste sites, is now officially a “wildlife refuge.” The most devastated terrain, the 980-acre live impact area, is officially designated as a “wilderness preserve” and blocked from public access.

The base land’s designation as a wildlife refuge was a decision based more on politics than environmental concerns. Legally, cleanup of unexploded ordnance and other military waste is determined by projected land use. Land designated for “conservation use” requires only a superficial cleanup, since presumably no humans will inhabit it. The wilderness designation to the live-impact range, bombed 60 years, has less to do with maintaining the quality of the ecosystem than with evading responsibility for environmental remediation. Land inhabited by pelicans and sea turtles, simply put, is not a national priority for cleanup.

Historically, many National Wildlife Refuges in U.S. and its territories—for example, Cabeza Prieta in Arizona and the Johnston Atoll and Midway Islands in the Pacific—were once military ranges, sites for military production or weapons testing, or bases. While the media often celebrate the creation of new parkland and the return of land to nature, the politics of these land transfers demands scrutiny.

By the terms of the 1964 Wilderness Act, which Congress invoked to reserve the Vieques bombing range as a refuge, a wilderness area should appear “to have been affected primarily by the forces of nature, with the imprint of man’s work substantially unnoticeable” and have “outstanding opportunities for solitude or a primitive and unconfined type of recreation.” No part of the Wilderness Act describes the contemporary Vieques landscape.

Not surprisingly, the Department of Fish and Wildlife has become the lightning rod for local resentment. Residents see the department as acting as the navy’s handmaiden, blocking access to land for which residents have struggled for decades and cleanup of contamination. Rather than appreciating Fish and Wildlife’s “protection” of the environment, many residents resent the agency as the island’s most recent usurper. They see the mandate to protect former base land as an extension of restrictions and absolute control over the land established by the navy.

“Fish and Wildlife has everything in Vieques,” declared Pito Delarme, a 39-year-old construction worker. “Now you can’t collect coconuts and crabs, you can’t fish, you can’t collect anything!” Delarme bristled at Fish and Wildlife’s efforts to protect Vieques from everyday human activity, after 60 years of unimpeded destruction. “When the navy was here, where were these laws? The navy destroyed the coral, they killed the turtles, the fish, the crabs, contaminated the land—all of this destruction and [Fish and Wildlife] never stopped them for 68 years. And now we want to develop this part of Vieques well, and we’re not permitted.”

Fish and Wildlife officials have protested that the Department of Interior never wanted Vieques land, and that it was imposed on them by Congress. Nevertheless, Fish and Wildlife’s custodianship of the land prevents the cleanup that residents desire. Military contamination behind the barbed-wire fences of the refuge will remain unaddressed as long as its land use is designated for endangered birds and turtles, rather than for humans.

The military used the western and eastern sides of Vieques very differently, and their contrasting contamination and cleanup issues today reflect this. In the west, where the navy maintained an ammunition depot and a small operational base, cleanup is connected to the storage and disposal of munitions. Almost 2 million pounds of military and industrial waste—oil, solvents, lubricants, lead paint, acid, and other refuse—were disposed of in different sites in mangrove swamps and sensitive wetland areas. A portion of this waste contained extremely hazardous chemicals. One 200-acre site was used to detonate and burn excess and defective munitions.4

The navy initially identified 17 different sites where it would investigate contamination and remove munitions lying on the surface (without cleaning up solvents or toxins leaching into the soil or buried ordnance). By March 2005, however, the military committed itself to further assessing and exploding ordnance on the surface of only three out of the 17 sites. Nine of them required “no further action,” the navy argued, and five supposedly contained only minimal contamination, posing no significant risk.5 In a controversial move, the navy also argued that much of the toxic contamination in Vieques did not, in fact, originate from military activity, but rather from naturally occurring geological processes.6

The military’s resistance to cleaning up the relatively limited amount of contamination on the western “clean” side of Vieques indicates how contentious the cleanup process in the east may become. Cleaning up the 14,573-acre eastern side of the island, used for naval firing exercises and maneuvers since the 1940s, is much more dramatic in scope. The point of the most intense destruction is the live-impact range, about the size of New York City’s Central Park, on the island’s eastern tip. Most unexploded ordnance in Vieques is concentrated in this easternmost former target area, yet some ordnance is likely to have strayed off target and into adjacent land, beaches, and water. In addition, land-based maneuvers involving live-fire exercises took place in different locations in the east, making it unclear how extensive the spread of munitions is outside the live-impact area.7

According to the Environmental Protection Agency, extensive unexploded ordnance and remnants of exploded ordnance remain in this range and its surrounding waters. “Hazardous substances associated with ordnance use may include mercury, lead, copper, magnesium, lithium, perchlorate, TNT, napalm, and depleted uranium among others,” an EPA report notes. In addition, at both the former marine base, Camp Garcia, and the small naval base in western Vieques, “hazardous substances present may also include a range of chemicals such as PCBs, solvents, and pesticides.”8

A 2000 EPA report found that most former firing ranges have significant contamination. The survey discusses widespread health dangers at 206 closed, transferred, transferring, and inactive military ranges. It concludes that “contamination resulting from used or fired munitions including UXO [unexploded ordnance] is found on almost all ranges. . . . UXO has been found on 85 percent of the ranges and chemical or biological weapons are known to exist or are suspected at over 50 percent of the ranges. The risks from contamination resulting from ordnance use are widespread. Ranges in this report potentially pose significant risks to human health and safety because of their proximity to growing surrounding populations.”9

On February 11, 2005, the EPA responded to then Puerto Rican governor Sila Calderón’s request to identify Vieques as a Superfund site, which places cleanup of hazardous sites under federal authority. Under the Superfund law, the EPA is responsible for identifying parties responsible for waste sites and compelling them to clean up hazards. Priority is established by the threat that the toxic waste in question poses to human health and the environment. This caveat is crucial for Vieques because the extent to which island residents are barred access to the former base land reduces their contact with hazardous sites and lets the military off the hook.

However, establishing that people have been exposed to contamination, even without having stepped foot in the former naval areas, could legally compel the military to clean up its waste. Such exposure would most likely come from drinking contaminated groundwater or eating contaminated fish or shellfish.10 In fact, an international tribunal found in 2000 that the groundwater in Vieques has been contaminated by nitrates and explosives.11 Moreover, two studies suggest that toxic heavy metals have entered the Vieques food chain.12 The first study documented high levels of lead, cobalt, nickel, and manganese in violin crabs and in plants near the Vieques impact area. The second study found that vegetables and plants growing in some civilian areas of Vieques are highly contaminated with lead, cadmium, copper, and other metals.

In a major setback to community groups, however, the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR), the lead federal public health agency responsible for determining human health effects associated with toxic exposure, announced that it found no toxic contamination in Vieques.13

The agency’s findings of no significant contamination—after more than 60 years of live-fire exercises and given the fact of drastically increased cancer rates—outraged community members, who found this conclusion at odds with common sense. Indeed, research data suggests a correlation between the onset of live bombing exercises in the 1970s and the escalation of cancer rates in Vieques.14 In this context, ATSDR’s findings stood out as remarkably convenient for the navy.

In May, however, a congressional investigative report on formaldehyde-contaminated Katrina trailers lambasted ATSDR’s pronounced tendency to “deny, delay, minimize, trivialize or ignore legitimate health concerns.” The report found that ATSDR colluded with FEMA to declare the trailers safe. In the course of the hearings, the Vieques case was introduced as another example of ATSDR’s misconduct and bias in favor of polluters. In response, the EPA has pledged to reopen its investigation on Vieques.

If and when Vieques is adequately cleaned up, it will be an extremely dangerous, expensive, and challenging task.15 Over time live ordnance sinks, requiring cleanup crews to remove both surface and subsurface soil to remove it. Munitions with depleted uranium—fired on the range in violation of federal law—can sink hundreds of feet because of their mass and the force of the large guns that fire them. Enormous amounts of soil must be removed to recover lost depleted-uranium rounds.16

Cleaning groundwater is also difficult and expensive. Subterranean water must first be located under thousands of acres of land, which is in itself a difficult process, then pumped to the surface, cleaned with scrubbing devices, and returned to the ground.17 Coral reefs and sea grass beds have been significantly damaged by bombing, sedimentation, and chemical contamination.18 And even though numerous bombs lie off the shores of Vieques, cleaning the water is outside the purview of military requirements.

While residents struggle for access to land and cleanup of contamination, they contend with another battle related to the federal wildlife designation: gentrification. Although little has changed in the material conditions of the municipality since the navy’s departure, its exit has removed the principal obstacle to development and triggered wild speculation. Investors seeking out homes and land that can be developed and resold for substantial profit have driven up housing prices, and sales in beachfront neighborhoods have soared. By cordoning off former base land, the wildlife refuge has effectively attracted off-shore capital that is displacing working-class residents from the island. Thus residents are doubly excluded, both by the refuge and the real estate frenzy that it stimulated.

Although Vieques had changed very little, local brokers and outside interests seized on the former bombing range’s new status as a wildlife refuge to aggressively market the island as an undiscovered tropical
paradise. North American investors are largely enthralled by the creation of a new national park in the Caribbean and the possibility of buying a relatively inexpensive piece of “paradise.” One striking indicator of the island’s rapid gentrification was a listing in The New York Times Escape section featuring a three-bedroom house with guesthouse for sale in Vieques for $2.5 million. The owner was quoted as saying: “We love the beach, we love the Caribbean. Vieques, though, is very different from many of the other islands. Two-thirds of the island is a wild preserve, and there are a lot of beautiful beaches with no development —that’s what is special to us.”19

When asked what he thought of the influx of North Americans to Vieques, Leonardo Velázquez Maldonado, 70, a retired bank manager and lifelong resident, quipped, “I’m happy to have Americans here. I say, welcome to Vieques! Come share our contamination with us!”

Claudio Encarnación Solís, a 60-year-old former laborer and artist, puzzled over the seeming indifference of North American investors to health concerns. “Their interest in acquiring land and money affects their minds,” he said. “Those who don’t have to worry about cancer can concentrate on palaces, development, and factories. [The North Americans] don’t worry about health. For us viequenses, who are experiencing this crisis and illness, we are preoccupied not with money but with health. You have to have good health first to be able to enjoy everything else.”

Faced with multiple challenges posed by environmental contamination, the wildlife refuge, and gentrification, islanders continue to rely on social mobilization to hold the military and state accountable for cleanup and sustainable development. Since 2003, activists have organized numerous acts of civil disobedience, including marches and setting up encampments on restricted beaches in eastern Vieques, demanding that the federal government clean up the area and return it to residents.

These acts of civil disobedience have had a demonstrable effect on the cleanup process. The navy initially devoted itself to removing ordnance only from the western side of Vieques, a smaller, more manageable operation than addressing the catastrophic mess in the east. Protesters’ continued defiance, however, in entering into restricted eastern lands, demonstrated that the land was meant to be used by people, not just pelicans. This forced the navy to shift gears and begin cleaning up in the east. In addition, activists’ continued opposition to the open detonation of ordnance in the cleanup process forced the EPA to set up an air-monitoring station.

As Vieques residents struggle for access to land and participation in local decision making, they confront broader questions of political authority, control over natural resources, definitions of common property rights—in sum, the rights and privileges of citizenship. The struggle of Vieques remains fundamentally about unequal power relations between the United States and Puerto Rico and the island’s lack of sovereignty. As Vieques residents demand a voice in the future of the island, however, as they struggle for accountability and environmental remediation, they lay the groundwork for self-determination.

_____

Katherine T. McCaffrey teaches anthropology at Montclair State University.
She is the author of Military Power and Popular Protest: The U.S. Navy in
Vieques, Puerto Rico (Rutgers University Press, 2002).

_____

1. This essay is based on long-term ethnographic and documentary research in Vieques, Puerto Rico. Portions of this essay are drawn from Katherine T. McCaffrey, Military Power and Popular Protest: The U.S. Navy in Vieques, Puerto Rico (Rutgers University Press, 2002) and McCaffrey, “The Struggle for Environmental Justice in Vieques, Puerto Rico,” in David Carruthers, ed., Environmental Justice in Latin America: Problems, Promise and Practice (MIT Press, 2008).

2. Vice Admiral (ret.) John Shanahan and John Lindsay-Poland, “Vieques: Is It Needed by the Navy?” Vieques Issue Brief (Fellowship for Reconciliation, Winter 2002).

3. U.S. Navy, Commander, U.S. Second Fleet, “National Security Need for Vieques,” July 15, 1999.

4. See Lirio Márquez and Jorge Fernández Porto, “Environmental and Ecological Damage to the Island of Vieques Due to the Presence and Activities of the United States Navy” (Special International Tribunal on the Situation of Puerto Rico and the Island Municipality of Vieques, 2000). Also, “Resumen de estudios y datos ambientales en Vieques” (Universidad Metropolitana, New Jersey Institute of Technology, y el Centro de Acción Ambiental, 2000).

5. David Bearden, Vieques and Culebra Islands: An Analysis of Cleanup Status and Costs, Congressional Research Service Report (Library of Congress, 2005), 14.

6. John Lindsay-Poland, “The Long Struggle for Cleanup,” Puerto Rico Update (Task Force on Latin America & the Caribbean, August 2003).

7. Bearden, Vieques and Culebra Islands, 15.

8. Environmental Protection Agency, “Atlantic Fleet Weapons Training Area—Vieques,” National Priorities List, epa.gov/superfund/sites/npl/nar1719.htm.

9. United States Environmental Protection Agency, Office of Solid Waste and Emergency Response, “Used and Fired Munitions and Unexploded Ordnance at Closed, Transferred, and Transferring Military Ranges. Interim Report and Analysis of EPA Survey Results” (April 2000).

10. Beardon, Vieques and Culebra Islands, 2.

11. Márquez and Fernández Porto, “Environmental and Ecological Damage.”

12. Arturo Massol Deya and Elba Díaz, “Biomagnificación de metalescarcinógenos en el tejido de cangrejos de Vieques, Puerto Rico” (Casa Pueblo de Adjuntas y Departamento de Biología del Recinto de Mayagúez, Universidad de Puerto Rico, 2000); “Metales pesados en la vegetación Dominante del area del impacto de Vieques, Puerto Rico” (Casa Pueblo de Adjuntas y Departamento de Biología del Recinto de Mayagúez, Universidad de Puerto Rico, 2000).

13. “A Summary of ATSDR’s Environmental Health Evaluations for the Isla de Vieques Bombing Range” (ATSDR, November 2003).

14. Cruz María Nazario, Erick L. Suárez, and Cynthia Pérez, “Análisis crítico del informe incidencia de cáncer en Vieques del Departamento de Salud de Puerto Rico” (Río Piedras: Universidad de Puerto Rico, Recinto de Ciencias Médicas, 1998).

15. David Sorenson, Shutting Down the Cold War: The Politics of Military Base Closure (St. Martin’s Press, 1998).

16. Ibid., 83, n. 174.

17. Ibid., 81.

18. Márquez and Fernández Porto, “Environmental and Ecological Damage”; also, Caroline S. Rogers, Gilberto Cintrón, and Carlos Goenaga, “The Impact of Military Operations on the Coral Reefs of Vieques and Culebra,” report submitted to the Department of Natural Resources (San Juan, Puerto Rico, 1978).

19. Amy Gunderson, “Houses With Outdoor Showers: The Simplest Luxury,” The New York Times, May 20, 2005.

Vieques Artisans and Book Fair

Fort Count Mirasol Museum
P.O. Box 71 Vieques, Puerto Rico 00765
Telefax 787 741-1717 <mailto:rrabin@icp.gobierno.pr>
rrabin@icp.gobierno.pr
Saturday, 29 August, 2009 6:00-11:00 PM

The Fort Count Mirasol Museum and the Organization of Vieques Artisans invite you to a Vieques Artisans and Books Fair this next Saturday beginning around 6pm in the grounds at the Fort.

In addition to an impressive array of artesanry, typical drinks and foods and Vieques books, there will be music by Manolin Silva: Ivory and Steel, with the special participation of Guayama (Puerto Rico) musician, “Tito” Rovira on the piano.

Also offering their musical talent will be our young Hip Hop artists, Lady M and McNatra.

Entrance free

Vieques, PR
Green Intelligence, by Dr. John Wargo will be available September 29, 2009 and will include a chapter which critiques the ATSDR’s public health assessments on Vieques:.

Risk of Toxic Exposures Far Greater than Most Americans Perceive
Threat to Health of Children is Particularly Profound

Most Americans are aware that pesticides, radioactive materials, and heavy metals in the environment have the potential to cause harm. Most Americans also assume that environmental hazards are well studied and reasonably well regulated, and that in general the risk of harmful exposure is small. They perceive their world to be relatively safe.

Americans feel this way, John Wargo explains, because they lack access to even the most basic information that would help them understand and evaluate risks to their families and to their own health. In Green Intelligence, to be published September 29 by Yale University Press, Wargo demonstrates that exposure to hazardous, health-damaging chemicals is widespread and poorly regulated, and that knowledge of contamination and danger is often kept from a too trusting public. The presence of dangerous chemicals in the environment, Wargo argues, may help explain the rise in some of the leading health challenges of our time: obesity, dementia in the elderly, diabetes, asthma, developmental abnormalities in children, reproductive failure, and more.

The picture John Wargo paints is a shocking one. Each day, most people are exposed to thousands of chemicals in mixtures never experienced by previous generations. Most individuals carry in their tissues a combination of metals, pesticides, solvents, fire retardants, waterproofing agents, and by-products of fuel combustion. Many toxins are significantly more concentrated in the bodies of young children. Surely, we think, these chemicals have been proven safe if they are used in consumer products. But Wargo tells us that 80,000 synthetic compounds in circulation have not been sufficiently tested. Regulation of chemicals is neither systematic nor independent, and protecting human health is not given priority in our laws. The resulting threat to health and life is very real, and in order to combat it, we must improve the gathering and dissemination of green intelligence, the crucial data that make clear the risks we face.

Wargo employs specific examples of past and present exposures to identify weaknesses in our system and lessons we can apply to guard human health. From the case of atmospheric nuclear testing, we learn how persistence and dispersal of dangerous compounds can spread risk in unpredictable ways. From the case of pesticides, we learn that piecemeal science conducted by corporations, weak regulation, and toothless reporting requirements inevitably fail to protect public health. From the case of diesel pollution, we learn that even when scientific evidence of a health threat exists, regulatory changes often proceed at a glacial pace. From the case of Vieques, the island off Puerto Rico used as a US bombing range, we learn that environmental harm from military activities persists long after bases are closed, and that the Defense Department shows little interest in restoring devastated landscapes and coastal waters to ensure the safety and health of residents.

Turning to an emerging threat, Wargo examines in detail the dangers posed by the ubiquity of plastics in our lives and environment. Hormonally active components of plastic products known to cause serious reproductive abnormalities in animals can be found in the tissues of every citizen of a developed nation, with especially high levels in children.

Wargo finds striking similarities in these seemingly disparate case histories: delayed discovery of danger and a government too willing to look the other way, or worse, to purposely confuse the public’s understanding of environmental hazards. Together, he argues, these cases demonstrate the global scale of the chemical experiment we are performing on our children.

Green Intelligence is a frightening book, but it also one that proposes clear solutions. John Wargo outlines tough principles for better intelligence-gathering on toxic chemicals. He also offers specific guidelines for managing risks of exposure in the real world. While these sweeping changes would offer the best protection for all of us, they will require a sea change in the way we think about our world. So in an Epilogue, Wargo also outlines steps individuals and families can take to limit their own exposure as much as possible while fighting for larger change.

For more information or to arrange an interview with the author, please contact Tanya Wiedeking, 203.432.7762, tanya.wiedeking@yale.edu, or Liz Pelton, 410.467.0989, <mailto:lizpelton@aol.com> lizpelton@aol.com.

About the Author:

John Wargo is professor of environmental policy, risk analysis, and political science at the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies and the Department of Political Science at Yale University. He is Chair of the Environmental Studies Major in Yale College and has been an adviser to several EPA administrators and National Academy of Sciences Committees, the U.S. Congress, the U.N. World Health Organization, and Vice President Al Gore. The author of Our Children’s Toxic Legacy, Wargo lives in Killingworth, Connecticut.

GREEN INTELLIGENCE
Creating Environments that Protect Human Health
By John Wargo
To be published September 29, 2009
$32.50 hardcover, ISBN: 978-0-300-11037-1

A sobering assessment of the impact that the late twentieth century’s chemical revolution has had on the global environment and human health, Green Intelligence offers a sweeping view of a vast terrain that is invisible to most Americans and that has not been previously explored.
Philip J. Landrigan, M.D., Mount Sinai School of Medicine

Green Intelligence is by far the most informed, cogent, and readable of the books on the environment that I have encountered. His argument is clear and compelling, his approach is unusual and insightful, and his science is sound.
Herbert Needleman, M.D., University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine

A great book on one of the most neglected aspects of the human predicament: the toxification of our planet. Green Intelligence tells the tale through a series of case histories full of personal interest, making it an engrossing read as well as a dependable source of information. And it ends with a bonus: sound advice on how to reduce your own exposure to toxics.
Paul R. Ehrlich, co-author of The Dominant Animal

From nuclear war to farm chemicals to the diesel fumes inside the big yellow school bus, Green Intelligence covers it all, offering us a comprehensive anatomy and a clear-sighted vision for rescue. Bravo!
Sandra Steingraber, author of Living Downstream: An Ecologist Looks at Cancer and the Environment

This volume is a twenty-first century Silent Spring distilled and brought up to date with appealing prose. . . a disturbing book of revelations about the soup of manmade pollutants that permeates the entire world. Green Intelligence also provides a clear roadmap for the ways forward. . . Required reading for all citizens and leaders.
Thomas E. Lovejoy, Heinz Center for Science, Economics and the Environment

This is the book to read on the full array of chemical dangers in our environment. It is comprehensive, eloquent, deeply informed, and full of practical wisdom.
Donald Worster, University of Kansas

Message concerning the August 12 Meeting in Vieques with the ATSDR Director
Vieques Libre applauds the Vieques community leaders, scientific advisors and others who participated in the meeting in Vieques this past Wednesday August 12 with Dr. Howard Frumkin, Director of the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) and members of his staff, as part of the “fresh look” the ATSDR is taking at the Vieques health crisis and the previous ATSDR public health assessments on Vieques which have been questioned and criticized by several scientists, Members of Congress, and others.

During the meeting in Vieques, the ATSDR Director made several important statements and acknowledgments about the prior ATSDR public health assessments on Vieques, among them:

(1) He acknowledged that those ATSDR Vieques studies had not been peer-reviewed and pledged that the new ones would be submitted for external review, including by local scientists;

(2) He acknowledged that those ATSDR Vieques studies did not really take into account the various independents scientific studies by Puerto Rican scientists and others (that, among other things, showed the link between the Navy’s use of toxins and chemicals and the health crisis among Viequenses). He pledged that he would take into account those studies this time around;

(3) He acknowledged that his agency is small and has a limited budget and thus relies heavily on the studies conducted by others. The ATSDR Director said that in order to conduct proper studies and assessments, the agency needs to know what were all the agents that were dropped by the Navy in Vieques. He acknowledged that, when the agency performed the public health assessments over six years ago which showed “no apparent health hazard” from the toxins and chemicals dropped by the Navy in Vieques, the Navy failed to provide needed data and information to the agency.

The participants explained to Dr. Frumkin that the previous ATSDR public health assessments in Vieques have been used by the Navy to justify actions like open burning and open detonation in Vieques, like the proposed and much-criticized burning of some 200 acres of vegetation -in a highly contaminated area- as part of the clean up in Vieques, like their use as a defensive weapon by the Navy to claim they have no responsibility to address the health crisis in Vieques, among other things.

Dr. Frumkin was told that the consensus among the Viequense community and community leaders, the Mayor of Vieques, scientific advisors, and others, is that the ATSDR must follow the recent precedent in the case of Camp Lejeune, North Carolina and withdraw the previous ATSDR public health assessments in Vieques now. (In the case of Camp Lejeune, the ATSDR recently withdraw its 1997 public health assessment of Camp Lejeune’s drinking water system stating that it could no longer stand behind the accuracy of its conclusion that the contaminated drinking water system posed no threat to human health).

Dr. Frumkin said that if the previous studies by the ATSDR are shown to be faulty, then the agency would withdraw them, but that it’s too soon to tell now. He was then told that if the agency’s new “fresh look” at the Vieques situation is to have credibility then the most sensible and reliable way to truly take a fresh look was to withdraw the much-maligned previous ATSDR studies now, rather than build upon that faulty foundation.

Participants mentioned the example of Camp Lejeune, where residents were given a false sense of security by the ATSDR for over ten years in spite of the health hazards denounced by scientists and community activists. The eventual withdrawal of the Camp Lejeune public health assessments by the ATSDR was a welcomed step. But it took much too long. Similarly, the previous ATSDR studies in Vieques have been questioned by community activists, by respected scientists from Puerto Rico and the U.S. and by Members of Congress, and the people of Vieques cannot afford to wait any longer until those previous studies are withdrawn. Moreover, in the interim, the previous ATSDR studies continue to be used by the Navy to justify actions that are detrimental to the people of Vieques, and will continue to be used as such until the previous studies are withdrawn.

In short, during the meeting Dr. Frumkin made some important acknowledgments concerning the previous ATSDR public health assessments on Vieques, and made some commitments to the community. There is still a great deal of mistrust about the ATSDR, however. The Vieques community and its allies will remain alert and vigilant and will continue to stress that the best way for the agency to take a truly “fresh look” at the Vieques health situation -as has been requested by Members of Congress- is to withdraw its previous ATSDR public health assessments on Vieques now.

By MANUEL ERNESTO RIVERA (AP) – 13 hours ago

VIEQUES, Puerto Rico — U.S. authorities have begun a review of a five-year study that found no ill effects caused by decades of military exercises on the tiny island of Vieques.

The executive director of the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry met with residents late Wednesday and pledged to revisit the agency’s findings. Howard Frumkin said officials would correct data and investigate further if needed.

“If there is anything more we can do, it will be done,” he said.

Frumkin’s visit to Puerto Rico marks the start of the review of a study that came under fire in congressional hearings earlier this year.

But his visit was met with suspicion from residents, who long resented the presence of the U.S. military on the island that lies just east of Puerto Rico.

The U.S. Navy bought two-thirds of Vieques in 1948 and used the land as a bombing range for nearly 60 years. Protesters demanded the military’s ouster after an errant bomb killed a civilian security guard in 1999.

The Navy left in 2003 and has cleared thousands of unexploded rockets, cluster bombs and other munitions from the area, which is now a Fish and Wildlife Service refuge.

Last year, the Navy announced it had set aside $200 million for another seven years of cleanup efforts targeting more than 9,000 acres (3,600 hectares) of the almost 23,000 acres (9,300 hectares) it occupied.

But residents say the cleanup is leading to more contamination because bombs are being detonated in the open.

Community leader and anti-Navy activist Robert Rabin said previous studies “represent the death of this community because it has already been shown how the Navy used those studies to justify open detonation and burning of vegetation.”

Democratic Rep. Steven Rothman of New Jersey has said he expects an update of the revision by October.

“I find it unacceptable that the residents of Vieques have not been given a fair assessment of the health risks associated with years of U.S. Navy activity,” Rothman said in a statement earlier this year. “It is obvious that ATSDR’s studies declaring no negative impact are highly controversial.”

His spokesperson, Carrie Giddins, said Thursday that Rothman was not available for comment.

Presentation by the Committee for the Rescue and Development of Vieques before the Executive Director of the Federal Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, Dr. Howard Frumkin, at the Puerto Mulas Lighthouse,
Vieques August 12, 2009

Dr. Frumkin and members of the ATSDR team present:

Welcome to Vieques. We appreciate your presence and the interest in Vieques shown by the US Congress, President Obama and the agency you direct.

My name is Armando Torres Sanes and I am a member of the Committee for the Rescue and Development of Vieques, community organization that works for justice and peace.

Three years ago I lost my wife of 57 years of age to cancer. Like many Vieques families, mine has suffered the effects of the horrible health crisis here.

Our committee fought during many years to end the US Navy bombing to stop the destruction of our natural resources, economic strangulation and the poisoning of our air, land and water. We struggle in defense of the health of our people, for the rights of our people and the next generations to live in a healthy and safe environment.

We have no doubt about the relationship between the sicknesses that attack our town and the military practices carried out for half a century here by the US Navy.

During all those years they deposited on this island tnt, aluminum, cadmium, lead and many other chemicals in great amounts. How is it possible that your studies show everything is clean?

After so many years of lies and deceit by the Navy as well as federal and Puerto Rican agencies charge with protecting the environment and our health, it is difficult to have faith in campaign promises and the new initiatives taking form in the Congress and at ATSDR.

Despite this, it is our duty to take advantage of all opportunities to push for justice for our people.

For this reason we participate in this dialogue, with hopes that you have come with genuine interest in hearing our thoughts about these topics of life and death.

We respectfully urge you to begin a new process of scientific studies about the effects of military toxics on the health of our people.

We use this fórum to express our objection to the open burning and detonation of unexploded ordnance and vegetation in the ex bombing range, practices the Navy says is part of the clean up but we say add more dangerous toxics into our environment.

We reiterate our call for a new program of studies and investigations about the military toxics that have poisoned our air, land, sea and food chain and the effects of this contamination on our people’s health.

Without health, there is no justice!

Without justice, there is no peace!

Help us obtain peace for our people and the next generations of Viequenses.

Thanks

COMITE PRO RESCATE Y DESARROLLO DE VIEQUES

Committee for the Rescue and Development of Vieques

P.O. BOX 1424 VIEQUES, PUERTO RICO 00765

cels. 787 375-0525 787 206-0602 f, 787 741-8787

E mail: robert.rabin@cpdv.org

Website: http://www.cprdv.org

Excerpted from the book Vieques, A Photographically Illustrated Guide to the Island, Its History and Its Culture
Although most of Vieques formed as a result of limestone deposits, some areas, notably Mount Pirata, is volcanic. Some of this volcanic material is a black crystalline substance called magnetite, which washes down the Quebrada Urbana during heavy rains. This magnetite has collected downwind and down current from the mouth of the Quebrada Urbana and has resulted in the only black sand beach on Vieques. (Magnetite is iron based and the black sand on the Black Sand Beach will be attracted to a magnet, a cool science experiment for visiting schoolchildren.)

Committee for the Rescue and Development of Vieques
P.O. BOX 1424 VIEQUES, PUERTO RICO 00765
cels. 787 375-0525 787 206-0602 f, 787 741-8787
E mail: <mailto:robert.rabin@cpdv.org> robert.rabin@cpdv.org
<http://www.cprdv.org> www.cprdv.org
10 August 2009

Press Release

Agency for Toxic Substance and Disease Registry visits Vieques to revise its studies and conclusions on military toxics and health on the island municipality.

Dr. Howard Frumkin, Executive Director of the Agency for Toxic Substance and Disease Registry (ATSDR) – part of the Center for Disease Control (CDC/Atlanta), will meet in Vieques with community leaders Wednesday, August 12.

Participants in the meeting with Dr. Frumkin will include members of the Committee for the Rescue and Development of Vieques (CRDV); Vieques Women’s Alliance; Restoration Advisory Board; Vieques Commerce Association; scientific advisors to the Vieques community from the University of Puerto Rico, Dr. Jorge Colón and Dr. Cruz María Nazario; lawer Flavio Cumpiano, CRDV advisor in Washington, DC. The meeting will take place Wednesday, August 12 at 7:00 PM at the Punta Mulas Lighthouse in Isabel Segunda, Vieques.

Six years after the cessation of bombing n Vieques, this community struggle now to get the US Navy to clean up the island municipality of the military toxics left behind after six decades of war practices. The Viequenses demand, also, that government agencies – both federal and Puerto Rican – guarantee their right to live in a safe environment and in good health.

Wednesday’s meeting in Vieques corresponds to strong criticism of ATSDR by a congressional commission that forced its Director, Dr. Howard Frumkin, to point to the need for “taking a fresh look at the 2001 studies” done by ATSDR on Vieques.

These studies indicated that Vieques’ health crisis – for instance, a 27% higher cáncer incidence compared to the rest of Puerto Rico – had no relation to contamination produced by the US Navy. ATSDR studies about Vieques have been criticized by several scientists from Puerto Rico and the United States. Members of a congressional commission – the Subcommission for Investigations of the Science and Technology Commission of the House of Representatives – have criticized ATSDR studies about Vieques and urged Dr. Frumkin to reexamine his agency’s studies and Vieques’ health situation, and to take into consideration the many scientific studies by Puerto Rican professionals and others that indicate high levels of heavy metals in the environment, the food chain and in the people of Vieques.

Community groups reject Navy practices of open air detonation of unexploded ordnance as part of the ‘clean up’. They argue that the explosion of bombs over the past two years has added to the level of contamination. They also oppose Navy plans to burn hundreds of acres of vegetation in the ex bombing range on Vieques to facilitate location of bombs and other dangerous artefacts.

Since the ATSDR studies and conclusions were made public more than six years ago, suggesting that toxic substances dropped by the Navy on Vieques do not represent a health risk, the Navy has rested on these studies to avoid responsibility for an adequate clean up, descontamination and Vieques health crisis. The visit to Vieques by the ATSDR director coincides with the consideration in the Puerto Rico district of the US Federal Court, of a lawsuit by seven thousand Viequenses against the Navy for health damages. Lawyer John Arthur Eaves, Jr., legal representative for the plaintiffs, will also be in Vieques this week to participate in meetings, including on with clients and others interested on Thursday, August 13 as 6:00 PM at the island’s Multi Use Center.

Contacts: Nilda Medina 787 206-0602

Robert Rabin 787 375-0525