Government above the law?

The Defense Department wants to shirk laws governing air pollution, toxic waste and Superfund cleanups at thousands of military ranges across the country, but opponents warn that the proposals before Congress threaten the health of neighbors in Minnesota and across the country. Congress will likely vote on the Bush administration's proposal for exemptions in May.

Minnesota has two Department of Defense toxic Superfund sites that need to be cleaned up: the Naval Industrial Reserve Ordnance Plant in Fridley, and the Twin Cities Army Ammunition Plant (TCAAP) in Arden Hills. But the 126 military operational ranges in Minnesota could also be exempted from environmental laws.
"Bottom line, these exemptions would mean that toxic waste in Minnesota will not get cleaned up," said Katherine Blauvelt, Minnesota Representative for the National Environmental Trust. "Innocent men, women and children may be exposed to toxic contamination, and meanwhile communities are left with the cost of cleanup," she stated.

This year, the Bush Administration's Defense Department is asking for exemptions to the Clean Air Act, the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) and Superfund. The proposed health and environmental exemptions would affect over 8,000 operational ranges across the country, covering more than 24 million acres of land. Many of these ranges are contaminated or have toxic hazards.

DoD asked for similar exemptions last year, but Congress turned them down. Congress did grant the Defense Department exemptions from the Marine Mammal Protection Act and the Endangered Species Act.

Contamination Knows no Boundaries

Groundwater and drinking water contamination is the chief concern for residents of Fridley, due to the Naval Industrial Reserve Ordnance Plant Superfund site, located in Anoka County just 700 feet from the Mississippi River, where the U.S. Navy and its contractors have produced advanced weapons systems since 1940.
The Environmental Protection Agency placed this site on the Superfund Cleanup National Priority List after regulators found the toxic chemical trichloroethylene (TCE), which causes nervous system and liver and kidney damage, in local groundwater wells and in the city of Minneapolis drinking water treatment plant intake, which is located approximately 1,500 feet downstream from the site in the Mississippi River. The EPA later learned that groundwater contaminated primarily with TCE was flowing into the Mississippi River at 37 parts per million -- more than seven times the levels set by the Safe Drinking Water Act. More than 200,000 people live within three miles of the site, and an estimated 29,000 people obtain drinking water from public wells within three miles of the site.

John Haukass, Public Works Administrator for the city of Fridley, says cleanup operations at NIROP are well underway. "They [DoD] have to get it to a point where it is considered cleaned up," stated Mr. Haukass. "They are pumping groundwater, pulling some of the trichloroethylene back up. There is no set date to stop pumping. They need to keep going until it is done," he stated.

But the proposed exemptions may open the door to the military backtracking on its commitment to clean up contamination. The exemptions may mean that contamination like the TCE found in the Mississippi River could not be cleaned up at its source - the Naval base. In act, all military munitions - including chemical and depleted uranium weapons - and the contamination they cause would be exempted from regulation under the law that governs how disposal is handled. Polluting munitions would be allowed to lie on or in the ground where they can leak into the environment and possibly endanger an installation's residents and the surrounding community.

Minnesota Attorney General Mike Hatch recently joined 38 other State Attorney Generals in opposition to the exemptions, stating in a letter to the Armed Services Committees, “As chief enforcers of our respective environmental laws, we think that these amendments would significantly impair our ability to protect the health of our citizens and their environment." The Association of Metropolitan Water Agencies, the National Audubon Society and the Association of Local Air Pollution Control Officials are a few of the groups on record opposing the exemptions.

The number of communities that could be affected is staggering. According to the Military Toxics Project, nationwide, 25 million acres of land on closed, transferred and transferring ranges are contaminated with unexploded ordnance, chemical munitions, toxic explosive compounds, toxic propellants and heavy metals like lead.

A Solution In Search of A Problem?

In a hearing before a House Energy and Commerce subcommittee, Raymond DuBois, Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Installations and Environment, said, "[The exemptions] remain essential to military readiness and range sustainment and are as important this year as they were last year -- maybe more so."

But in a December 2003 meeting with officials from several western states, Department of Defense officials acknowledged that there has never been an instance in which any of these laws have impacted military readiness and that preempting state authority was “not a matter of readiness, but of control.”

"Our military has served us well without being exempt from health or environmental laws," said Katherine Blauvelt, from the National Environmental Trust. "If it's not affecting training or readiness, why shouldn't they have to clean up their toxic messes like everyone else?" she stated.

The General Accounting Office said in a 2002 report that it found little evidence to support the Bush administration's claims that environmental laws hamper military training. And last year Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Christie Todd Whitman said she couldn't recall any training missions scrapped or delayed due to environmental regulations. Current law already allows case-by-case exemptions and permits the President to waive environmental rules in specific situations when national security is at stake.

It is now up to Congress to decide whether to accept or reject the proposed blanket exemptions.

Lois Rem, City Councilwoman from Arden Hills, says that “the Twin Cities Army Ammunition Plant, a Superfund site in Ramsey County, is being cleaned up to protect the water supply and the communities nearby.”

“If the government discontinues cleanup funding now, we will lose not only the promised completed cleanup, but we may lose progress already made as contamination is left to sit or to spread. The Army and its contractors locally are making good progress to finish TCAAP cleanup. We can't let Washington put a stop to it now."