United States Navy in Vieques, Puerto Rico
[citation needed] The eastern end of the island was used for live training exercises, ship-to-shore gunfire, air-to-ground bombing and US Marine amphibious landings starting from the 1940s onward.
[2] After the base was closed, Puerto Rico Governor Sila Calderon requested Vieques be placed on the U.S. National Priorities List as a designated superfund clean-up site.
"[3]As of 2007[update] the Navy was to "conduct an environmental investigation of its previously owned property under the federal Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) to determine what cleanup actions" were needed.
[14] A few months after Sanes's death, small wooden structures were erected inside the practice grounds, and encampments from all over the island-municipality started to attract attention.
Many celebrities, including the political leader Ruben Berrios, singers Danny Rivera, Robi Draco Rosa and Ricky Martin, boxer Félix "Tito" Trinidad, writers Ana Lydia Vega and Giannina Braschi, American actor Edward James Olmos and Guatemala's Nobel Prize winner Rigoberta Menchú supported the cause, as did Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Al Sharpton, and the Rev.
The closure of the base at Roosevelt Roads resulted in a substantial financial loss to the economy of Puerto Rico that the Navy estimates at $250 to $300 million a year.
It will also be used to centralize general aviation activities now dispersed over several municipal airports, saving the Puerto Rico Ports Authority significant sums of money on maintenance and other costs.
[citation needed] On April 30, 2003 many supporters of the Cause of Vieques traveled to the island-municipality to hold a celebration inside the past bombing practice grounds.
[citation needed] Those indicted said that their behavior was caused by the resentment and bitterness that had accumulated from the decades of suffering due to the Navy's bombing practices on the island.
Norma Burgos, a Senator of Puerto Rico, who had formerly been imprisoned for trespassing on the bombing range several months earlier, justified the behavior by comparing it to the fall of Saddam Hussein's statue in the recent invasion of Iraq — in which U.S. soldiers used an Army tank (a property of the U.S. government) to tear it down.
Over the course of U.S. Navy occupancy, nearly 22 million pounds (10,000 tonnes) of military and industrial waste, such as oils, solvents, lubricants, lead paint, acid and 55 US gallon (200 L) drums, were deposited on the western portion of the island.
[21] In a 2001 federal lawsuit, Vieques' environmental groups and residents accused the Navy of causing "more damage than any other single actor in the history of Puerto Rico".
Ordnance included toxic compounds and elements such as arsenic, lead, mercury, cadmium, depleted uranium and napalm, and tons of a fiberglass-like substance.
Representative Charles Rangel (D-NY) investigated contamination in Vieques and discovered that A number of studies conducted by well-qualified scientists from universities in the United States and in Puerto Rico reveal that there is a high probability that the compounds released by the Navy exercises and chemical testing created toxic levels in the environment and could be the cause of serious medical conditions affecting the people of Vieques.
[23] Testing done in the Icacos Lagoon showed concentrations of cadmium in crabs to be 1,000 times higher than the World Health Organization's "tolerable ingestion maximum dosage."
One study from 1999 that tested hair samples from various age groups of Vieques residents revealed that 69% were contaminated with cadmium and arsenic, and 34% had toxic levels of mercury.
[23] Biologist Arturo Massol and radiochemist Elba Díaz conducted an unpublished study in 2001 that showed vegetables and plants growing in the civilian area of Vieques were highly contaminated with heavy metals such as lead, cadmium and copper.
Furthermore, they discovered that metal concentrations in edible crops were both substantially above the maximum levels set by the European Union Council and much higher than plants tested in mainland Puerto Rico.
This is consistent with the theory that heavy metals travel by air to civilian areas via the steady easterly trade winds that blow directly from the bombing zone.
[23] According to a 2006 newspaper article there is a study by the Puerto Rico Health Department which linked abnormally high levels of asthma in children to mercury contamination.
However, Dan Fahey, the Director of Research at the Gulf War Resource Center, points out that the RAND report was incomplete: it ignored 68 relevant sources that show clear relationships between DU and harm to human health.
[26] In 1958, the veteran World War II Fletcher Class Destroyer USS Killen (DD593) served as a target ship for wreckage during the atom bomb tests in Operation Hardtack I (shots WAHOO and UMBRELLA).
[30] Studies and site visits made in 1999 by a Puerto Rican marine archaeologist and the University of Georgia discovered nearly two hundred steel barrels of unknown origin and contents among the wreckage of the Killen.
Based on government descriptions of the nuclear tests in the Pacific,[28] some scientists and Vieques environmental activists have been concerned that nuclear-fallout cleaning materials were stored inside those barrels and improperly disposed, possibly entering the local environment prior to sinking or exposing contaminants to the animals and habitat of Bahia Salina del Sur in Vieques after sinking.
In a study conducted for Puerto Rican Governor Calderon, 48 of the 50 Vieques residents tested were diagnosed as suffering from vibroacoustic disease — a thickening of heart tissue caused by exposure to sonic booms.
The tapes of echocardiograms, which measured the pericardial thickness, were blind-coded and sent to the Mayo Clinic to repeat without knowledge of whether study subjects were from Vieques or from the control group.
[citation needed] At a press conference in 2001 Robert B. Pirie, Under Secretary of the Navy, said that: "our training poses no danger and little burden to Viequenses and is absolutely vital to our national security".
[34] Pirie claimed that most of the studies linking the Navy's actions to the decline of public health were done by researchers affiliated with the Puerto Rico Independence Party, and that "none of the health-related allegations made have stood-up to credible scientific scrutiny or universally accepted legal standards".
[34] On behalf of the Navy, Johns Hopkins University School of Hygiene and Public Health conducted a review of the study on vibroacoustic disease done by the Vieques government.
The ATSDR also did not adequately emphasize negative findings in their report, such as the high levels of benzene —more than four times the maximum allowed, which were found in a groundwater well on the navy's property.
