News 5 Investigates: 143,000 pounds of chemicals from Fort Carson found in Colorado waterways
KOAA News
Eric Ross
July 2, 2014
Data obtained from the Environmental Protection Agency shows nearly 850,000 pounds of toxic chemicals ended up in Colorado rivers and streams in 2012.
News 5 uncovers one of the largest offenders is Fort Carson. Digging deeper, we learned the military post has a history of violations. Some violations were verbal or written warnings, while others resulted in hefty fines.
According to the EPA, 143,000 pounds of toxic chemicals from Fort Carson made their way into Clover Ditch which runs into Fountain Creek.
"We don't want any toxins in our water," El Paso County Commissioner Dennis Hisey said.
We brought our findings to Hisey, who just so happens to serve on the board for the Fountain Creek Watershed Flood Control and Greenway District.
"Regardless of whether it's in our stream or in our drinking cup, what we need to be concerned about is what's in the cup," Hisey said.
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Showing posts with label environmental hazards. Show all posts
Showing posts with label environmental hazards. Show all posts
Thursday, July 3, 2014
Saturday, July 17, 2010
Iraq War Veterans Join Environmentalists in the Oiled Gulf of Mexico
Iraq War Veterans Join Environmentalists in the Oiled Gulf of Mexico
By Bryan Walsh Saturday, Jul. 17, 2010
Robin Eckstein has a closer relationship than most of us to the long supply chains that brings oil from the well to the wheel. In 2007 she was an Army truck driver in Iraq, shipping fuel from Baghdad International Airport to the forward bases of American operations. The U.S. military is an oil-thirsty machine, and it was the job of troops in logistics, like Eckstein, to keep the occupation fueled. That meant driving miles every day in a fuel convoy through some of the most dangerous streets in the world.
"Every day when we left the airport, I was thinking, time to roll the dice," she said. "Would it be insurgents, an IED, something else? We were just a big, slow, vulnerable target."
To Eckstein—who made it home OK from her tour in Iraq—the epiphany was inevitable. If gas was still cheap in America it was in part because the U.S. military was paying to keep some level of stability in the Middle East. Oil had its hidden costs for the U.S., costs that weren't factored into the price of gas—one of which was the blood of young American soldiers. "It all really resonated with me," the 33-year-old said. "Why weren't we doing things in a more efficient way?"
Read more: Iraq War Veterans Join Environmentalists
By Bryan Walsh Saturday, Jul. 17, 2010
Robin Eckstein has a closer relationship than most of us to the long supply chains that brings oil from the well to the wheel. In 2007 she was an Army truck driver in Iraq, shipping fuel from Baghdad International Airport to the forward bases of American operations. The U.S. military is an oil-thirsty machine, and it was the job of troops in logistics, like Eckstein, to keep the occupation fueled. That meant driving miles every day in a fuel convoy through some of the most dangerous streets in the world.
"Every day when we left the airport, I was thinking, time to roll the dice," she said. "Would it be insurgents, an IED, something else? We were just a big, slow, vulnerable target."
To Eckstein—who made it home OK from her tour in Iraq—the epiphany was inevitable. If gas was still cheap in America it was in part because the U.S. military was paying to keep some level of stability in the Middle East. Oil had its hidden costs for the U.S., costs that weren't factored into the price of gas—one of which was the blood of young American soldiers. "It all really resonated with me," the 33-year-old said. "Why weren't we doing things in a more efficient way?"
Read more: Iraq War Veterans Join Environmentalists
Thursday, October 2, 2008
Report: Army making toxic mess in Iraq and Afghanistan
Report: Army making toxic mess in war zones
By Kelly Kennedy - Staff writer
Posted : Thursday Oct 2, 2008 16:48:46 EDT
The U.S. Army is creating a toxic mess in Afghanistan and Iraq, according to a new report that details cases of hazardous waste dumped in ditches, soldiers setting up tents on top of fuel spills and service members exposed to cyanide gas during overseas deployments.
The report by the Rand Corp. think tank also says the Defense Department has no overarching policy to ensure environmental mishaps in Iraq and Afghanistan don’t harm troops’ health, create political disputes and avoid costly clean-up efforts when it’s time to leave those countries.
“If not properly addressed in planning or operations, environmental considerations can make it more difficult for the Army to sustain the mission — yet environmental considerations are not well incorporated into Army planning or operations in any phase of an operation,” states the report, released in late September by the Rand Arroyo Center, a federally funded research and development center that supports the Army.
The report, “Green Warriors: Army Environmental Considerations for Contingency Operations from Planning through Post-Conflict, states:
• A contractor hired by the Defense Department dumped waste oil in a landfill in Iraq and then sold the barrels.
• U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan buried several drums containing unidentified liquids, which later turned out to be hazardous, posing a risk of soil and groundwater contamination.
• In Iraq, an airfield sits over an old airfield with leaking fuel tanks. “Major health issues arise whenever it is necessary to dig.”
• Commanders in Iraq have set up hazardous-waste disposal areas close to camp perimeters, creating a force-protection issue since they were potential targets for hand grenades and IEDs.
• High-grade diesel fuel was spilled in a lake in Iraq that was used for drinking water at a base. The lake is no longer used as a source of drinking water.
• U.S. forces in Iraq improperly dumped insecticides, batteries, oil products and other hazardous material. Soldiers joked that fuel spills were “replenishing the oil wells.”
go here for more
http://www.armytimes.com/news/2008/10/military_toxiciraq_100208w/
By Kelly Kennedy - Staff writer
Posted : Thursday Oct 2, 2008 16:48:46 EDT
The U.S. Army is creating a toxic mess in Afghanistan and Iraq, according to a new report that details cases of hazardous waste dumped in ditches, soldiers setting up tents on top of fuel spills and service members exposed to cyanide gas during overseas deployments.
The report by the Rand Corp. think tank also says the Defense Department has no overarching policy to ensure environmental mishaps in Iraq and Afghanistan don’t harm troops’ health, create political disputes and avoid costly clean-up efforts when it’s time to leave those countries.
“If not properly addressed in planning or operations, environmental considerations can make it more difficult for the Army to sustain the mission — yet environmental considerations are not well incorporated into Army planning or operations in any phase of an operation,” states the report, released in late September by the Rand Arroyo Center, a federally funded research and development center that supports the Army.
The report, “Green Warriors: Army Environmental Considerations for Contingency Operations from Planning through Post-Conflict, states:
• A contractor hired by the Defense Department dumped waste oil in a landfill in Iraq and then sold the barrels.
• U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan buried several drums containing unidentified liquids, which later turned out to be hazardous, posing a risk of soil and groundwater contamination.
• In Iraq, an airfield sits over an old airfield with leaking fuel tanks. “Major health issues arise whenever it is necessary to dig.”
• Commanders in Iraq have set up hazardous-waste disposal areas close to camp perimeters, creating a force-protection issue since they were potential targets for hand grenades and IEDs.
• High-grade diesel fuel was spilled in a lake in Iraq that was used for drinking water at a base. The lake is no longer used as a source of drinking water.
• U.S. forces in Iraq improperly dumped insecticides, batteries, oil products and other hazardous material. Soldiers joked that fuel spills were “replenishing the oil wells.”
go here for more
http://www.armytimes.com/news/2008/10/military_toxiciraq_100208w/
Thursday, May 29, 2008
War Illnesses Fester
War Illnesses Fester
By Thomas D. Williams
The Public Record
May 29, 2008
Favoured : 2
Published in : Nation/World
"The most shocking fact about war is that its victims and its instruments are individual human beings, and that these individual beings are condemned by the monstrous conventions of politics to murder or be murdered in quarrels not their own." - Aldous Huxley, English Writer
Ever since the Persian Gulf War 15 years ago, countless spokespersons for the US Department of Defense and the US Department of Veterans Affairs have insisted they are intent upon giving hundreds of thousands of soldiers, veterans and war veterans the best medical care available.
Meanwhile, scores of US, United Nations and foreign politicians and military officials have constantly expressed immense concern for potentially millions of innocent civilian victims of the wars in Bosnia, Iraq and Afghanistan. Yet, relatively little has been done worldwide to track their deaths, console family survivors or obtain health care for the wounded, maimed and sick. The combined ill and the dead from those four wars are estimated in the millions with no exacting figures available. Knowledge about sicknesses caused by the war in Bosnia-Serbia is scarce.
And, what makes US and allied officials far more culpable is this. The environmental hazards foreign civilians and US and allied service members have been exposed to and sickened by are largely generated by US and allied bombings, munitions and even medicines aimed at protecting service members. They include: radioactive dust from depleted uranium munitions, deadly chemical warfare gases released by US bombings of Iraqi bunkers, oil well fires during the first Gulf War, pollution of European and Middle Eastern foreign air and water supplies from wartime explosions and fires, pesticides, fumes from specialized military vehicle paint, and disease carrying insects.
The air and water hazards have had untold deadly impacts on innocent civilians in both Europe and the Middle East for more than the past decade.
Here is but one lone example of the lack of emphasis on care for wounded or sick wartime civilians: "A survey of Medline (a database of medical and health-related research articles) for articles on the Gulf War revealed 368 articles that covered the health-related issues. Only 4 out of these 368 articles were on how the 1991 Gulf War affected the health of Iraqi people."
Yet, the International Red Cross reports these realities: "[Iraqi] Medical-legal facilities are struggling to cope with the rising influx of bodies, contending with insufficient capacity to store them properly or to systematically gather data on unidentified bodies in order to allow families to be informed of a relative's death. In 2006, an estimated 100 civilians were killed every day. Half of them remained unclaimed or unidentified. Thousands of unidentified bodies have thus been buried in designated cemeteries in Iraq. Meanwhile tens of thousands are being held in the custody of the Iraqi authorities and the multinational forces in Iraq. At the same time, tens of thousands of families remain without news of relatives who went missing during past and recent conflicts."
By Thomas D. Williams
The Public Record
May 29, 2008
Favoured : 2
Published in : Nation/World
"The most shocking fact about war is that its victims and its instruments are individual human beings, and that these individual beings are condemned by the monstrous conventions of politics to murder or be murdered in quarrels not their own." - Aldous Huxley, English Writer
Ever since the Persian Gulf War 15 years ago, countless spokespersons for the US Department of Defense and the US Department of Veterans Affairs have insisted they are intent upon giving hundreds of thousands of soldiers, veterans and war veterans the best medical care available.
Meanwhile, scores of US, United Nations and foreign politicians and military officials have constantly expressed immense concern for potentially millions of innocent civilian victims of the wars in Bosnia, Iraq and Afghanistan. Yet, relatively little has been done worldwide to track their deaths, console family survivors or obtain health care for the wounded, maimed and sick. The combined ill and the dead from those four wars are estimated in the millions with no exacting figures available. Knowledge about sicknesses caused by the war in Bosnia-Serbia is scarce.
And, what makes US and allied officials far more culpable is this. The environmental hazards foreign civilians and US and allied service members have been exposed to and sickened by are largely generated by US and allied bombings, munitions and even medicines aimed at protecting service members. They include: radioactive dust from depleted uranium munitions, deadly chemical warfare gases released by US bombings of Iraqi bunkers, oil well fires during the first Gulf War, pollution of European and Middle Eastern foreign air and water supplies from wartime explosions and fires, pesticides, fumes from specialized military vehicle paint, and disease carrying insects.
The Pentagon's and the British military's mandatory use of the controversial anthrax vaccine and other experimental drugs, including US use of pyridostigmine bromide pills to protect against gas attacks, on troops have resulted in thousands of adverse reactions, many serious ones, some even listed on drug labels as possible but not provable fatal reactions.
The air and water hazards have had untold deadly impacts on innocent civilians in both Europe and the Middle East for more than the past decade.
Here is but one lone example of the lack of emphasis on care for wounded or sick wartime civilians: "A survey of Medline (a database of medical and health-related research articles) for articles on the Gulf War revealed 368 articles that covered the health-related issues. Only 4 out of these 368 articles were on how the 1991 Gulf War affected the health of Iraqi people."
Yet, the International Red Cross reports these realities: "[Iraqi] Medical-legal facilities are struggling to cope with the rising influx of bodies, contending with insufficient capacity to store them properly or to systematically gather data on unidentified bodies in order to allow families to be informed of a relative's death. In 2006, an estimated 100 civilians were killed every day. Half of them remained unclaimed or unidentified. Thousands of unidentified bodies have thus been buried in designated cemeteries in Iraq. Meanwhile tens of thousands are being held in the custody of the Iraqi authorities and the multinational forces in Iraq. At the same time, tens of thousands of families remain without news of relatives who went missing during past and recent conflicts."
Today, after two wars in Iraq, one in Bosnia and another in Afghanistan, involving hundreds of thousands of US troops, neither the Pentagon nor the VA, by their own admissions, are close to giving thousands of soldiers and veterans even adequate health care for potentially deadly illnesses.
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