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maining sites remain under investigation (Atlantic Division, NAVFAC 2004).
There is special concern about the former Open Burn/Open Detonation area, in
the western part of the island. This site was used for disposing of leftover and
defective ordnance; old munitions, bomb components, and flares were burned
there in an open pit. The site was closed in 1970 after an accident involving
three youths, but unexploded ordnance may still exist in this area (Márquez and
Fernández 2000; UMET et al. 2000). Tests from the western side Resolución
aquifer, however, show heavy metal contamination coming from the ordnance
sites on the Interior Department land (San Juan Star 2001).
It is no surprise, then, that the 3,100 acres given to the Fish and Wildlife
Service have become the first part of the Vieques National Wildlife Refuge, thus
barring Viequenses from much of the returned land and also sparing the Navy
the expense and effort of a thorough cleanup. It is now a common practice
throughout the United States for the Pentagon to transfer polluted former base
land to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for use, paradoxically, as wildlife
preserves. 15
124 Katherine T. McCaffrey and Sherrie L. Baver
Although contaminated, the land in western Vieques has not suffered the
severe ecological destruction from six decades of bombing that is the case in
the east. A thorough cleanup of the eastern part of the island will be much more
dramatic in scope than in the west. The eastern side of Vieques was used for
bombing exercises and maneuvers from the 1940s to the time the Navy left in
2003. The cleanup of firing ranges has proven one of the most dangerous, ex-
pensive, and challenging tasks in the military base conversion process (Sorenson
1998). That is why the entire eastern side of Vieques, consisting of 14,699 acres,
was transferred to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service when the Navy departed
in May 2003.
According to the Navy, eastern Vieques has been bombed an average of
180 days per year. In 1998, the last year before protest interrupted maneuvers,
the Navy dropped 23,000 bombs on the island, the majority of which contained
live explosives (U.S. Navy 1999). The most intense destruction was in the Live
Impact Area, which constituted 980 acres on the island s eastern tip. This has
now become a National Wilderness Area with human presence prohibited. All
14,699 acres and the surrounding waters of eastern Vieques had been used as
shooting ranges, amphibious landing sites, and toxic waste dumps since the
1940s. Coral reefs and aquatic plants sustained significant damage from bomb-
ing, sedimentation, and chemical contamination. Nitrates and explosives have
contaminated the groundwater (Márquez and Fernández 2000; Rogers, Cintrón,
and Goenaga 1978).
The cleanup of unexploded ordnance on land is a clear safety issue and
would be a top priority. Of particular concern are revelations that the Navy has
fired depleted uranium munitions on the range, because of the risks this may
pose for the civilian population.16 Numerous unexploded bombs remain off the
shores of Vieques; cleaning offshore must be part of the long-term cleanup effort.
At least three economic conversion and development plans already exist
to promote Vieques s future, including plans for an environmentally sensitive,
sustainable tourism industry (GAPT 2000; McIntyre and Dupuy 1996; Rivera
Torres and Torres 1996). The obvious problem is that all future plans presume
an island free of environmental hazards, a presumption that requires a major
financial commitment and act of political will from the federal government. In-
deed, the chances that the Navy and EPA under current statutes would be in-
volved in a full cleanup of both the western and eastern parts of the island are
slim at best.17
A major step forward in the Vieques struggle came in February 2005
when the EPA formally designated Vieques a Superfund site. The process had
begun almost two years earlier when then Governor Sila Calderón had requested
the island s inclusion on the National Priorities List (NPL) of most hazardous
waste sites. Specifically, the NPL designation requires the Navy to remediate
the Atlantic Fleet Weapons Training Area on eastern Vieques as well as waters
and cays in and around the island. Although Governor Calderón also had re-
quested inclusion of Culebra as part of the Superfund site, it is likely to be
Reframing the Vieques Struggle 125
cleaned up under another program (the Formerly Used Defense Sites) run by
the Army Corps of Engineers.
Still, the cleanup will not be short. To understand the probable dura-
tion and extent of this environmental justice struggle, it is helpful to consider
two relevant cases. After the Navy left Culebra in 1975, more than two decades
elapsed before funds were allocated to clean up ordnance. This limbo period
witnessed widespread land speculation, gentrification, and economic
marginalization of the local community (Iranzo Berrocal 1994; Rivera Torres
and Torres 1996). A second case is Kaho olawe, Hawaii, where the Navy also
had a live impact range. In 1990, President George H. W. Bush issued an ex-
ecutive order to end the bombing exercises on that uninhabited island, which
lies seven miles off Maui. In 1993, Congress agreed to finance a ten-year, $400
million cleanup effort for the forty-five-square-mile island. It took five years
for the process even to begin, and rancor existed throughout between the Navy
and Hawaiians. By 2000, the Navy had cleaned up only one-tenth of the island
(Klein 2001). In April 2004, Kaho olawe was turned over to the State of Ha-
waii with 77 percent of surface munitions and 9 percent of subsurface muni-
tions cleaned; almost all of that island remains off limits to civilian use. The
failure of cleanup efforts in the state of Hawaii is particularly troubling because
Puerto Rico, a U.S. territory, lacks the political leverage of one of the fifty states.
Finally, to put the Vieques struggle in a larger context, the long-term en-
vironmental cleanup of military bases is still highly contentious within the United
States. For decades, the Department of Defense (DOD) has relied on national
security concerns to argue for exemptions from environmental legislation. In the
1980s alone, the U.S. military was estimated to have generated 500,000 tons of
toxic waste per year, more than the top five U.S. chemical companies combined.
One report identified 20,000 sites at 1,800 military installations with varying
levels of contamination. Nearly 100 of these sites would warrant placement on
the National Priorities List of the Superfund cleanup effort (Renner 1994). It is
notable that in the post 9/11 priority on security, the Pentagon has successfully
argued for exemptions from parts of some environmental legislation.
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