Projects:

San Francisco Bay Area:

San Francisco
� Hunters Point Shipyard
�Shipyard Waterfront Park
� Yosemite Slough
� Treasure Island
� Presidio
Alameda
�Alameda Naval Air Station
�FISC Annex
East Bay Housing
Oakland
�Chinatown
Vallejo
�Mare Island Naval Shipyard
Contra Costa County
� Concord Naval Weapons Station
Suisun Bay
� Mothball Fleet

National:

Military & the Environment
RABS

International:

Philippines
Okinawa
Hidden Casualties of War

Program Areas:

Environment
Economics
Justice
Education
Public Partnership
War & the Environment

Military & the Environment: Sources of Military Pollution

Research & Development

Military research and development (R&D) is enormously costly to the environment. The process of creating new weaponry involves highly toxic chemicals, metals, biological pathogens, and radioactive materials.

The 38,000-acre Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, Alabama, manufactured and stored mustard gas other chemical agents and ordnance. It is currently used for testing missiles, propellants, explosives and ordnance. The soils and groundwater at the site are reported to be contaminated by solvents, metals, explosive wastes, heavy metals and semi-volatile organics. The cost of cleanup is estimated at $275 million and will be completed in 2030.

Base Industrial Activities

Military bases can be like small industrial cities. In addition to the gas stations, dry cleaners, and storm water pollutants that are typical of any city, military bases can host a wide variety of heavy industrial activities from ship repair to ordnance manufacture.

The U.S. Navy's Mare Island Shipyard in Vallejo, California, refueled and repaired Polaris, Poseidon, and Los Angeles class nuclear powered submarines. The base was closed and the cleanup of the facility is estimated to be in the neighborhood of $500 million.

Equipment Maintenance

Aircraft, ships, motor vehicles, and electronic equipment require extensive ongoing maintenance and repair.

The 3,820 acre Jacksonville Naval Air Station in Florida repaired and overhauled Navy jets and missiles. The facility is contaminated by jet fuel, solvents, acids, heavy metals, PCBs and low level radioactive waste. The base cleanup is estimated to cost $211 million and is scheduled to be completed in 2003.

Training

Training involves the use of actual weapons and ordnance, the regular flight of aircraft, and use of tanks, armored personnel transport, field artillery pieces, ships and submarines.

Fort Wainwright, a 918,000-acre U.S. Army arctic training center that borders Anchorage, Alaska, is contaminated with unexploded ordnance, ordnance wastes, chemical agents and heavy metals. The Army estimates it will cost $88 million to clean the site by 2010.

War Games

While training exercises involve developing competence in the use of military equipment, war games simulate actual combat, often involving multiple service branches and including militaries of other nations. The can also be quite large, involving tens of thousands of individuals. Tractor driven vehicles such as tanks, armored personnel carriers and heavy artillery can wreak havoc on habitats such as wetlands, coastal dunes and beaches, forests, and desert ecologies. The use of live fire can leave unexploded ordnance, ordnance waste, depleted uranium waste, and heavy metals in the environment.

War

Although warfare has almost always had an affect on the environment, modern combat has impacts orders of magnitude greater than any experience in past history.

The 1991 Gulf War resulted in widespread radioactive contamination of the combat zone and 700 burning oil wells which worsened monsoons in Southern Asia. 80,000 former military personnel now claim some ailment as a result of exposure to chemical agents and depleted uranium ordnance.