October 2002 Report on Environmental Legacy in Vieques

By John Lindsay-Poland

Navy officials in October said that bombing in Vieques will end by next May, but they refused to put a date for departure in writing or certify it to Congress as required by current law.

Vieques protest leader Ismael Guadalupe pointed out that the move was timed to influence elections in Florida, where Jeb Bush was in a tight reelection race. At the same time, Vieques activists called for the formation of a transition team that includes community and municipal representatives and scientific and environmental advisors.

The chief of the Navy’s Atlantic Fleet, Admiral Robert Natter, announced that one more round of bombing will occur in January, before the exercises are moved to eight different sites in southeastern United States. Natter said that the Navy is buying sets of simulators to allow ship crews to practice ship-to-shore shelling on the open seas. The first sets were due to be delivered by November 1, and more will be ordered if they are successful, Natter told The Virginian Pilot. The Navy also revealed that an official study recommended moving the training from Vieques to the other sites, and that heads of the Navy and Marines support the recommendation “in principle.”

But a letter from Navy Secretary Gordon England to Calderón on October 18 was “no guarantee and no certification” of the Navy’s departure from Vieques, said Navy spokesman David Luckett.

“Nothing has changed,” said Navy spokeswoman Dawn Cutler. Luckett’s remarks are bolstered by the fact that Navy officials did not go to Puerto Rico to make a public announcement, nor did they release anything official to the press. But Luckett did tell Puerto Rico Update, “The Department of the Navy is committed to ending training in Vieques by May 2003.”

While Calderón and others celebrated the Navy’s announcement, activists in Vieques say they have heard many promises before, and that supporters should not let down their guard. “Viequenses have experienced much disappointment over all these years. It isn’t easy to believe the military’s word,” said Father Nelson López of Vieques. “You’re not going to believe it until you see them over the horizon, and I don’t blame you,” said a Congressional staffer who has been close to the issue since the 1970s.

Forty-five Representatives have written letters in recent months urging President Bush to make a written commitment for the Navy to stop bombing and leave Vieques by May of next year.

Besides the risk that the Navy changes its mind — because of war in Iraq or in case England resigns and his successor has a different idea -, or that Congress tightens the rules for it to leave, there is danger that the Navy will leave behind the toxic mess that has caused such high levels of cancer in Vieques.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in August released for public comment a work plan to investigate a dozen contaminated sites in eastern Vieques. The sites were identified as contaminated in the 1980s, but EPA did not order the Navy to clean them until 2000. (See www.epa.gov/region02/vieques.htm)

New information showed how incomplete the EPA’s plans are. The Pentagon revealed on October 9 that it carried out chemical warfare exercises on Vieques in 1969 that exposed civilians and soldiers to Trioctyl phosphate, a simulant of nerve agent that causes cancer in animals. The exercises were part of a series called SHAD and Project 112, carried out from 1962 to 1971 that involved chemical and biological agents in Hawai’i, Alaska, Maryland and Florida, as well as Vieques.

At least one Marine who participated in the Vieques test said that he became sick from the exercises, which were done in secret with some troops suited up against the contamination. “I couldn’t get close to the firing area without it giving me headaches, intestinal [pain], dizziness,” said Hermogenes Marrero, then an infantryman in the Navy. Marrero said he saw tanks inscribed “112” — the code number for the chemical tests — on the Vieques beach, that had lines discharging directly into the seawater. He now suffers from multiple tumors and nervous system disorders.

Sources: El Vocero, 10/17/02; Virginian Pilot, 9/23/02; El Nuevo Día, 10/18, 10/20, 10/23/02; “Cold War-era Chemical and Biological Warfare Tests,” briefing to House Veterans Affairs Health Subcommittee, 10/9/02.