Synopsis
The first comprehensive analysis of the impact of toxic waste dumping by the U.S. military reveals how military bases across the country have endangered the environment and what the Pentagon has done to cover it up.
Reviews
In southeast Indiana, the 100 square miles of farmland known as the Jefferson Proving Ground (scheduled to close) contains more than one million unexploded bombs, mines and artillery shells, some buried 30 feet deep. In Hanford, Wash., the cleanup of radioactive wastes that have seeped into the ground is estimated to take 30 years and cost $57 billion. Using the Freedom of Information Act, freelance journalist Shulman documents what may be the country's most serious environmental threat: toxic contamination at virtually every one of the 1855 military installations. Shulman charges that the defense department has for years included toxic material in mixed lots of surplus goods sold to the public and that managers have withheld information about pollution. He notes that the Pentagon insists on running the cleanup program, resisting outside regulation and hiring the same contractors that helped create the problems. Costs of cleanup are staggering, and in such cases as chemical weapons, the technology in doubt. Shulman describes citizen efforts for action and offers information on agencies to contact.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Boston science-journalist Shulman hammers away at the US military establishment's abysmal handling of deadly waste--an extensively researched expos‚ certain to enlighten and frighten all who have the Armed Forces or the Department of Energy as neighbors. By studying specific circumstances and sites across the country, Shulman brings home the vast, multifaceted extent of the crisis: Within the Rocky Mountain Arsenal outside of Denver, for example, he saw, in 1988, ``Basin F''--a glowing, unlined lake of toxic sludge; the next year, in central California, a barn was found filled from floor to ceiling with abandoned, leaking drums of toxic and explosive materials that were traced back to the military; today, on the Hanford Reservation in central Washington State, lies a ``burial garden'' of leaking underground tanks filled with high-level radioactive waste in which explosive gases are building. Such horror stories seem endless, with 25,000 toxic military sites now suspected nationwide, not including land no longer under Pentagon jurisdiction. The halting, redundant, hugely expensive, and largely ineffective steps in recent years by Army, Navy, and Air Force officials to begin a cleanup, and their long- standing resistance to warning those citizens most at risk, receive full consideration here, with the ultimate message being that, while evidence of improvement exists, current efforts, coming after decades of indiscriminate dumping, won't stop the spreading plumes of toxic contaminants from reaching aquifers and local wells. An activist's handbook complete with legal appendices and lists of waste sites, but much, much more: This is a clear and concise condemnation of practices and attitudes in the last bastion of unregulated environmental destruction in America. -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
This book is an important work of investigative journalism that documents the damage to the environment inflicted by the U.S. military over the four decades of the Cold War. Shulman devotes a chapter each to some 15 different highly contaminated sites around the country. In each case, Shulman describes the nature and degree of the damage and analyzes how the Pentagon and other federal agencies have effectively written off tens of thousands of sites as "national sacrifice zones" that will pose a threat to human health and our air, soil, water, and wildlife for generations. This is both a telling expose and an eminently practical guide to citizens interested in demanding that their neighborhoods be cleaned up. The appendixes hold a wealth of information on strategies for action, pertinent law, and suspected contamination sites.
- Jennifer Scarlott, Campaign for Peace and Democracy, New York
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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