Abstract
How low can you go?
Grace Potorti doesn't think she's asking for much. Maybe a little quiet. After all, she lives in a rural desert area. Instead, she finds herself living in an environment crisscrossed by low-level training flights conducted by the air force, where “children run for cover, livestock and wildlife panic and stampede, and sensitive public lands are in danger of being set ablaze.” And it's not a little noise— the roar generated by low-flying fighters can exceed rock concert noise levels of 110 decibels.
February 10: An Alaska Air National Guard F-16 participates in exercises above the Nevada desert.
After more than a decade of asking the air force to complete a programmatic environmental impact statement, Potorti, executive director of the Rural Alliance for Military Accountability, said enough is enough. Her group, together with the Center for Biological Diversity and others, filed a lawsuit in a Washington, D.C. federal court in late January to force the service to reevaluate its flight training program.
Their lawsuit contends that under the National Environmental Policy Act, all federal agencies must file environmental impact statements for “major federal actions that significantly affect the quality of the human environment.”
The suit is a response to “new attempts and cumulative efforts” by the air force over the past 20 years to gobble up more and more air space without “any national needs assessment being done,” Portorti said. “There's no accountability or oversight other than the Federal Aviation Administration, which rubber stamps most Pentagon requests.
“City folks don't know what it means to have F-18s flying over their houses at 100 feet.”
But Capt. Joe Della Ve-dova, an air force press desk officer, said the air force has conducted numerous environmental impact statements. “We have people who do them all the time and we devote a considerable effort to maintaining the environment in our ranges,” he said.
Potorti's position, however, is that the air force has not looked comprehensively at its training activities. Instead, it conducts site-specific studies. For example, in response to an impact statement for air force training activities at Holloman air force base in New Mexico, the Bureau of Land Management noted that “the air force is fragmenting the National Environmental Policy Act process by presenting new air …use in a piecemeal fashion.” The air force produced a draft statement in the mid-1980s, but it was never finalized.
In a prepared statement, the air force said that the low-level training conducted in military operations areas is essential for combat readiness and provides American pilots with the realistic experience necessary to maintain proficiency and reduce U.S. casualties.
“The air force works closely with federal agencies, Native American tribes, and local governments to balance its test, training, and readiness requirements with responsible environmental stewardship and traditional land uses (such as recreation, hunting, grazing, etc.),” the statement said, adding that “while the air force uses airspace over the United States, the FAA owns and controls all of it and we comply with all of their regulations.”
The air force's low-level flight training program consists of thousands of miles of routes and covers approximately one million square miles. According to the suit filed by the Western Environmental Law Center, the program includes training flights flown by pilots from foreign militaries such as the German and Singaporean air forces, who use their own aircraft. Low-level training flights are conducted in “low-altitude airspace,” a band extending from 3,000 feet to 100 feet above ground level. Most flights are in the 200-500 foot range.
“To a large extent, the air force has chosen to use airspace directly above the National Wilderness Preservation System, the National Park System, the National Wild and Scenic Rivers System, and the National Wildlife Refuge System,” according to the law center. They contend that in a typical month, the air force schedules more than 48,000 domestic training flights.
—Bret Lortie
And then they went home
When women arrived at the gates outside Britain's Greenham Common in 1981 to protest NATO's decision to place cruise missiles there, few could have predicted that 18 years later there would still be trailers and tents outside the base gates. When the missiles went home in 1989, the women stayed. When the base closed in 1992, the women stayed.
An early 1980s protest at the main gate to the U.S. Air Force base at Greenham Common.
Then nobody thought the women would go home.
On September 5, 1999, the eighteenth anniversary of the first march, they finally did.
The story of Greenham Common is now a piece of Cold War folklore. Although the peace camp was often known best for its most sensational aspects— the children born and raised there, the alternative lifestyles, or the easily parodied leftist stereotypes— the camp boasted many victories. In December 1982, 30,000 women joined hands in a circle around the base, and in April of the following year, 70,000 supporters formed a 14-mile human chain linking Greenham with the British nuclear weapons labs at Burghfield and Aldermaston. Another 50,000 women brought down part of the fence that December, bringing international attention to the cause of nuclear disarmament.
One of the camp's more interesting victories came in 1992, when a suit filed by protesters claiming that the production of nuclear weapons breaks international law continued through two jury trials. The case resulted in hung juries.
Camp members plan to commemorate their activities by turning their former home at Greenham into a historical site with sculptures, gardens, standing stones, and information kiosks.
—B.L.
WEB Watch
Nuclear waste cleanup
After more than a decade of litigation, a lawsuit filed in 1989 by the Natural Resources Defense Council and other organizations has resulted in an Energy Department website that allows the public to search numerous department databases related to radioactive waste, spent nuclear fuel, and other materials for 134 sites. The suit alleged that Energy failed to finish a programmatic environmental impact statement. The Central Internet Database (cid.em.doe.gov) satisfies one of three major requirements of a 1998 settlement, which also forces the department to conduct a study of long-term stewardship for its sites and establish a $6.25 million fund for technical and scientific reviews.
The website houses a remarkable amount of information. There are 33 site profiles, reports listing the annual amounts of waste generated by the department, and projections for waste generation and inventories. There's also esoteric info. Want to know how many feet of sidewalk Energy has laid at the Nevada Test Site, or how many barns are at Fermi-lab? It's all there.
What watchdogs might find more useful is the ability to generate specific reports on high-level, vitrified, low- and mixed low-level, and transuranic waste. In a matter of minutes, for example, I discovered that in 1998 there were 2,135 metric tons of spent nuclear fuel stored at the Hanford Site and that Energy projects an inventory increase of 1,956 canisters of vitrified high-level waste between now and 2010.
The database is not easy to use. It took more than a cursory look to figure out the differences between various reports and how the numbers are reported. Reports are generated on-the-fly based on user input and are provided in Adobe's Portable Document Format (PDF). This alone makes things cumbersome, as many Internet users may not have the free software or expertise to understand how to download and view reports. The site explains how, but providing results in standard HTML would make navigation easier.
George W. Bush's articulation of the “foreign threat,” as explained during the New Hampshire primary.
Unfortunately, some data are excluded, such as classified, UCNI (unclassified controlled nuclear information), or proprietary information. The settlement also allows Energy to exclude any data related to commercial spent fuel and waste managed by the Naval Nuclear Propulsion Program.
Other resources
A jumping off point for more information about the nuclear weapons complex cleanup is at the Resources for the Future's Center for Risk Management (www.rff.org/nuclearcleanup). While the bibliography and articles may be interesting in some circles, this site's external links—to news sources, periodicals, and “stakeholder” organizations dedicated to these issues—are especially useful.
The Alliance for Nuclear Accountability's “U.S. Nuclear Weapons Complex” page is another helpful resource. A map shows the locations of 21 “hotspots,” and clicking on one of the labels brings up both the web address for official government-sponsored home pages as well as links, where available, and contact numbers for organizations monitoring that facility.
Another links page related to radiation, the environment, and health is the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research (www.ieer.org/links.html). From general background information to other resources on the web, this nuclear-focused portal is sure to answer many questions.
—B.L.
The death of common sense?
When officials at the Hanford Reservation wanted to test whether a 25-year-old underground pipe could handle the job of transferring highly radioactive waste from one storage tank to another, they didn't mess around with some faux waste mate-rial—they filled the pipe with a watery concoction of real nuclear waste, then pumped up the pressure to 190 pounds per square inch.
The pipe failed, and 60 gallons of contaminated material was spilled.
Spokane.net, which reprinted a January 25 Associated Press story about the spill, asked readers to express their opinions about testing the pipe with real, rather than mock, nuclear waste. Spokane.net's caution—that “no profanity or libelous statements will be printed”—probably seemed particularly appropriate in this case.
On the brighter side, the Pentagon and the Energy Department were apparently persuaded to cancel a similarly well-thought-out test. They planned to burn B-52 bomber parts and mock nuclear warheads containing a variety of toxic materials, including depleted uranium and as much as 100 pounds of beryllium, in the open air at the Tonopah Test Range in southern Nevada. What apparently quashed this test was the realization that before it could be conducted on public land, an environmental assessment would be required. They decided to take a pass.
Nevada Sen. Harry Reid said in a statement on February 29 that the plan “was poorly conceived from the start and could have wreaked havoc on the environment.” And Reid spokesman David Cherry added that Energy officials eventually admitted that some of the concerns Reid and citizen groups had expressed about the test were valid, and that officials “couldn't really with confidence calculate where the fallout would end up.”
—Linda Rothstein
“We're wise men, Euphredis, not wise guys.”
In Brief
▀ Missile stop
This 50-foot replica of a Trident missile, which appeared at the California Democratic Convention in San Jose on February 12, is only the first of a series of such mockups, says Peter Ferenbach of California Peace Action. The mock Tridents will be making frequent appearances around the nation on what is being billed as the “Missile Stop Tour.” They're expected to concentrate on campaign-related appearances between now and November.
▀ White powder, huh?
On February 7, a 911 call reported a suspicious white powder on the sidewalk outside the Finney State Office Building in Wichita, Kansas—the site of a costly anthrax hoax in 1998 (Associated Press, February 8). This time around, streets were closed for an hour while police investigated the powder, which turned out to be flour used by a local runners' club to mark its racing routes. Actually, the trail of flour the club used for an earlier race in December had also caused an anthrax scare, prompting club members to promise to warn 911 dispatchers before their next race. But “we just forgot,” explained club member Steve Clark.
▀ Stress reducers
In January, ITAR-Tass reported that two Russian nuclear scientists (identified only as “Bekhterev” and “Krivosh-lykov”), who are employed at the Snezhinsk Nuclear Center, claim they can prevent earthquakes. “Strong earthquakes were much fewer in the 1960s-80s,” they said, because nuclear weapons tests relaxed the “accumulated tensions” in the earth's crust. Therefore, the key to ending earthquakes is to “carry out special underground nuclear explosions” under international control. Bekhterev and Krivoshlykov also want you to know that if the nuclear moratorium is lifted, they're ready—with “special small-diameter charges capable of resolving this problem.” These devices were “long since developed by the Russian Federal Nuclear Center at Snezhinsk and were successfully used for peaceful purposes for several years.”
▀ Spread it around
An EPA report issued last fall concluded that “contaminants resulting from the use of hazardous waste in fertilizers do not generally pose a risk to human health” (Chemical & Engineering News, September 13, 1999; report available at epa.gov/epaoswer/hazwaste/recycle/fertiliz/risk/). However, those reassuring words apparently fell on deaf ears in the state of Washington, where this year state officials moved to end, at least temporarily, the distribution of an ammonium hydroxide fertilizer laced with 0.05 parts per million of uranium (Seattle Times, February 12). It seems that sales of the uranium-enriched fertilizer—a product of Siemens Power Corporation of Richland, Washington, a manufacturer of nuclear-fuel assemblies—violates state law requiring manufacturers to submit to disclosure, review, and approval before putting the product on the market. Siemens had been selling the waste-containing material since 1996, but state officials found out about it only after the company asked a federal agency, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, for permission to increase the product's uranium content to one part per million.
▀ Canada gets with the program?
In January, Canadian Air Force Gen. George MacDonald, the deputy commander of the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), warned during a “missile symposium” in Washington, D.C. that if the United States unilaterally “modified” the ABM Tr eaty, Canada might withdraw from NORAD (Jane's Defence Weekly, January 26). And without Canadian cooperation, he added, any U.S. national missile defense (NMD) would be in serious trouble. But in late February, Daniel Bon, policy chief for Canada's defense agency, told Parliament that Canada should sign on to NMD, because the greatest threats to Canada are poorly made Third World missiles. “When they aim at Colorado Springs, they may hit Toronto,” he explained (New York Times, February 25).
▀ A little heavy in the tail
What do you get when you mix depleted uranium, a Boeing 747, and really bad luck? A big mess, as Korean Air discovered last December when one of its planes crashed in Essex, England, with 300 kilograms of depleted uranium in its tail as a counterweight. Suspected of contributing to Gulf War syndrome, the material has residents concerned. No worry, say authorities, claiming it isn't a danger unless subjected to high temperatures for several hours. (New Scientist, January 15, 2000)
▀ Homeland defense?
The Pentagon has asked for $120 million in wiretapping funds authorized under the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act of 1994, which would be paid to telecommunication companies to facilitate electronic surveillance. Critics say the money may be used to help the Defense Department's intelligence arm—the National Security Agency—spy on U.S. citizens. Says Barry Stein-hardt, associate director of the American Civil Liberties Union, “There is no reason for [the Pentagon to ask for the funds] unless they have some intention of intercepting communications.” Cong. Bob Barr, a Georgia Republican, is also uneasy. He told Defense Information and Electronics Report (February 18) that it is “disturbing” to see the Pentagon become involved in “domestic law enforcement” activities.
The great Martian flag wars
Although Val Kilmer will set foot on Mars this fall in Red Planet—where Gary Sinise has been traipsing around since March in Mission to Mars—it's unlikely that real-life humans will disturb the Martian dust anytime soon. But that hasn't stopped the 2,700-member Mars Society from preparing for eventual colonization. How? Well, for one thing, it has a flag.
Designed by society president Robert Zubrin, the red, green, and blue tricolor was inspired by board member Kim Stanley Robinson's sci-fi books Red Mars, Green Mars, and Blue Mars. The colors symbolize the organization's goal of turning the dead planet into a more hospitable place for earthlings.
Longtime Mars enthusiast Carter Emmart is peeved that the Mars Society would introduce a splashy new flag when a perfectly good one already exists. In 1984, two weeks after being wowed by the second Case for Mars conference, retired NASA administrator Thomas Paine designed a flag that shows the Sun, Earth, and Mars on a gold background. He sent it along with a letter to one of the young meeting organizers, Emmart remembers, asking that the flag be passed along as a sort of legacy to future explorers.
Zubrin thought it wasn't good enough. “The U.S. flag isn't a picture of the United States. The French flag doesn't show an outline of France,” he complains. “Paine's flag depicted Mars as a planet, combined with the symbol for Mars— Ares, the god of war. A god of war doesn't have anything to do with Mars. Its flag should represent certain ideals.”
He has now moved on to the next huge challenge facing his expeditionary force: selecting an official Mars anthem. In August, Zubrin will be choosing from among submissions—which must be tape recordings accompanied by written lyrics. “No movement has ever gotten anywhere,” he explains, “without music.”
—Sarah Horowitz
Freudian slip?
Simple error, wishful thinking, or Freudian slip? In its latest budget request, the Energy Department asked for money to build a new factory to manufacture “new-design pits” as well as more cores for nuclear weapons of existing designs (Albuquerque Journal, February 24).
A sign at the Amarillo, Texas, airport, part of an exhibit maintained by the Amarillo National Resource Center, which is operated jointly by the Energy Department and the University of Texas.
When arms control advocates reacted to Energy's apparent intention to build weapons of new designs, officials backpedaled. Calling the new cores “new-design pits” was simple error, said a senior Energy official. The words “new design” were banished from the budget, and the phrase “replacement weapon pits” substituted.
By the next day, however, the department had realized that “replacement” also sounded a lot like “new.” So officials came up with a third phrase, “replacement pits for stockpiled (existing) warheads.” Brig. Gen. Thomas Gio-conda, Energy's acting weapons chief, also stressed that “there is no change in policy relative to the design or fabrication of new warheads and associated plutonium pits.”
That seemed right to some department watchers, who also believe there has been no change in policy— that Energy has intended all along to build weapons of new designs, regardless of testing moratoriums or domestic or international agreements not to do so.
—L.R.
Bret Lortie is assistant editor of the Bulletin; Linda Rothstein is managing editor. Sarah Horowitz is a freelance writer based in Chicago, Illinois.
Noted in passing …
Some Canadian pilots have been grounded because they are too fat to safely eject from their fighters…. The U.S. Army hopes to confound the increasingly voluble critics of the School of the Americas—alma mater of notorious killers and torturers throughout Latin America—by renaming it the “U.S. Military Institute for Hemispheric Security Cooperation.” …Can't balance your checkbook? Put it in perspective: In an attempt to balance its books, last year the Defense Department made “adjustments” of $7 trillion to its ledgers…. Cong. Dennis Kucinich, an Ohio Democrat, has posted on his web site a proposal to create a new department of the Executive Branch, the “Department of Peace” (www.house.gov/kucinich/action/peace.htm). Included in his plan: the department would be funded by an amount equal to one percent of the defense budget, and the annual January 1 New Year's Day holiday would be redubbed “Peace Day.” …On February 7, scientists suggested that asteroid 2000 BF 19 would collide with the earth in 2022. On February 8, other scientists reported that it would miss…. Annals of adventure travel: British tourists enjoying the beach at a Thai resort at Baan Phae were startled when a Thai Air Force F16/A fighter strafed their hotel and adjacent tennis courts. The machine gun fire was later attributed to “technical error.”