 Bombs Still Exploding; Environmental Peril for Island of Vieques
By Robert Waddell, July 3, 2009
After an historical and tumultuous activist battle against the United States, which forced the Navy to abandon bombing operations on the island of Vieques, today the struggle for the island’s well being continues including the environmental clean-up as well as who controls the island continues.
The Navy’s clean-up efforts to date have been negligible. Their idea of clean up has been to detonate the bombs and further pollute the environment. Activists say that heavy metals have continued to get into the soil and the food supply. When the Navy explodes these unused bombs, chemicals are released into the air then trade winds move these toxins in the direction of civilian populations who breathe in these air born contaminants.
“As far as I'm concerned the Navy is still bombing Vieques,” Rafael Cancel-Vazquez, Executive Director of the Asociacion Nacional de Derecho Ambiental, said. “We stopped the bombs from exploding and we thought it was achieved but it’s still going on.”
Today, the Navy has proposed to burn the bombs, which would cause further environmental and human damage, said Cancel-Vazquez. The Navy has received permission from the local Puerto Rican Environmental Quality Board. Now the Environmental Protection Agency in Washington, D.C. must give its approval for the Navy to burn the remaining bombs. The decision could come down any day now.
 While running for President, Candidate Obama promised to speedily clean up Vieques and so far his administration has done nothing. If the EPA gives the Navy approval, a claim can be made that the island has in fact been cleaned up, however with a significantly negative environmental and human impact.
According to an opinion piece on OpEdNews.com, “Scientific tests of the land have confirmed the presence of depleted uranium, Agent Orange and napalm, and testing of Vieques residents revealed dangerous levels of heavy metals including mercury, arsenic and lead. Yet, in the six years since the Navy abandoned the island, progress on cleaning up the Navy’s mess has been excruciatingly slow and attention to the health crisis among residents nonexistent.”
“If the EPA approves….you’re affecting the health of everyone on the island,” Cancel-Vazquez said. “Exploding bombs on the ground is the same as if they fell from an airplane: A bomb is exploding in Vieques. It’s not cleaning up when you’re affecting the health of the people.”
Dr. Jorge Colon, a chemist at the University of Puerto Rico said “The biggest concern is that armaments have a variety of chemicals, exploded, they’re exposed in the environment.”
Dr. Colon said that recent scientific studies conducted at the University of Puerto Rico have shown a high concentration of heavy metals in areas where people live. He and a group of scientists have already written letters to the U.S. Congress urging them to re-send scientists from the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry back to Vieques so that the ATSDR will complete a more thorough study.
 “We’re very concerned that the Navy believes they can explode bombs,” said Dr. Colon, “and disperse contaminants and expose people. They want to burn already contaminated vegetation surrounding the bombs in order to find them and expose the people of Vieques.”
Cancel-Vazquez said that a safer and a more environmentally sound way of disposing of the bombs would be a process where each ordinance is placed in an enclosed container where pollutants are not released into the air. However, the process could cost the United States into the millions and upward to billions of dollars.
While activists, from Al Sharpton to Bobby Kennedy, were mobilized, now the activists have dwindled down to only a committed handful.
“You can not compare the struggles from 1999 to 2003 as they are today,” said Cancel-Vazquez.
The Navy had been on the island of Vieques for over 60 years, using the island as a live testing ground. In 1979 protestors were arrested but the mission to finally remove the Navy came when David Sanis was accidentally killed by one of the tested bombs. Vieques became an international cause with celebrities supporting the Navy’s removal. Since the goal was to remove the Navy, when they left many activists felt that their goals had been achieved. More work is yet to be done say remaining activists.
“Been communicating with some Vieques folks via Facebook,” wrote artist and activist Yasmin Hernandez , “Just received a comment from one sister about walking along the coast and counting on one hand the properties that actually belong to Viequenses and of course commenting on the gentrification of Vieques.”
 Hernandez, who lives in New York City, has visited Vieques 4 times in the last 2 years interviewing residents of the island for a major art installation, which she wants to present on the island. After the demonstrations and civil disobedience, so many celebrities were acknowledged for their efforts but Hernandez pays tribute in her artwork to the people of Vieques.
“Going to Vieques is a bittersweet experience,” Hernandez said, “Vieques has a magic to it, an ancestral significance. You also see how destroyed the island is. You see a bomb cemetery, craters, with piles and hills of bombs that tower over you.”
Cancel-Vazquez said that removing the Navy was only the first part of the Vieques struggle. The second phase was the environmentally safe clean-up of the island and the third stage, the return of land to the people of Puerto Rico. The land formerly used by the Navy is now under the administration of the U.S. Interior, Fish and Wildlife.
“Getting the Navy out, we won that part of the struggle,” said Cancel-Vazquez, “now we’re at a stage when the struggle is to clean up the island. Another stage is the return of lands to those people of Vieques.”
This story was developed through the Education Beat Writing Fellowship at the New York Community Alliance. |
