PROTECT THE ʻĀINA, PROTECT THE PEOPLE, STOP MILITARY EXPANSION
KHON reports that two grounds maintenance workers were injured in Mākua Valley when an unexploded munition exploded:
According to the U.S. Army Garrison-Hawaii’s public affairs office, two ground maintenance contractors were injured after encountering an apparent unexploded ordnance at Makua Military Reservation.
It happened at around 1:45 p.m.
An Army contracted medevac helicopter airlifted the civilians to Queen’s Medical Center.
The incident is under investigation, the army said.
Here are two articles citing the recent court ruling that enjoins the Army from conducting live fire training in Makua until it has completed marine environmental impact studies as required by a 2001 settlement with Malama Makua. The Honolulu Star Advertiser reported “Army must conduct more studies on live-fire training at Makua” (June 21, 2012).
The AP reported “Judge wants updated Makua Valley studies” (June 22, 2012):
No branch of the military has trained in Makua with live ammunition since 2004, after the Army failed to complete a court-ordered environmental study on the effects of decades of military training. The Army and its opponents have been embroiled in a decade-long legal dispute over how the military may use the valley.
Many Native Hawaiians consider the valley sacred. Others object because the environment includes more than 50 endangered plant and animals. Lawsuits came after the training exercises led to multiple fires in the 4,190-acre Waianae Coast valley.
But this court ruling will not bar all Army training in Makua, and the slow easing out of Makua may be deliberate misdirection from the enormous military (Army and Marine Corps) at Pohakuloa on Hawai’i island:
Army officials say the military branch will abide by the order and use the military reservations in different ways, and decide whether to resume live-fire training once the studies are complete.
“The Army will continue to prepare soldiers through a training regimen that does not employ live fire while studies are completed, the results are analyzed and the appropriate level of National Environmental Policy Act planning is completed,” the Army said in a statement.
Last year, the top Army commander in the Pacific told The Associated Press he would need to keep his options open on Makua in case the construction of new ranges at Schofield Barracks and Pohakuloa Training Area is delayed.
In other words, the Army is holding Makua hostage while it expands on Hawai’i island.
For immediate release: June 21, 2012
Contact:
David Henkin, Earthjustice, (808) 599-2436, ext. 6614, dhenkin@earthjustice.org
Sparky Rodrigues, Mālama Mākua, (808) 352-0059
Court Confirms No Live-Fire Training at Mākua until Army Completes Missing Studies
Army ordered to report on progress in studying marine contamination, threats to cultural sites
HONOLULU – Yesterday, U.S. District Chief Judge Susan Oki Mollway issued an order confirming that no live-fire training may take place at Mākua Military Reservation (MMR) on O‘ahu until the Army completes new studies of potential military contamination of marine resources at Mākua and new surveys of Native Hawaiian cultural sites at risk of destruction from military training. Judge Mollway previously found that the Army’s failure to carry out these studies violated two court-ordered settlements with Mālama Mākua, a Wai‘anae Coast community group that first sued the Army in 1998 to secure comprehensive review of the impacts of military training at MMR.
“Last year, the Army said it wanted to keep open the option of conducting live-fire training at Mākua,” said Earthjustice attorney David Henkin, who represents Mālama Mākua. “Yesterday’s order makes clear that the court will hold the Army to the promise it made in 2001 that it would first complete these important studies before any live-fire training can occur.”
In October 2010, Judge Mollway determined that the Army violated its obligation under a 2001 settlement with Mālama Mākua to complete comprehensive subsurface archaeological surveys to identify cultural sites that could be damaged or destroyed if mortar rounds, artillery shells, and other ordnance go astray during training exercises, as they have in the past. Despite the passage of nearly two years since that ruling, the Army failed to take any steps to carry out the required surveys. In yesterday’s order, Judge Mollway instructed the Army to file quarterly progress reports to “update the court on the progress of these surveys.”
The Army also must report on its progress on studies of contamination of limu (seaweed) and other marine resources in Mākua’s nearshore waters on which Wai‘anae Coast families rely for subsistence. In her October 2010 order and in a separate order following a June 2011 trial, Judge Mollway concluded the Army had violated the terms of a 2007 settlement with Mālama Mākua when it failed to conduct these marine studies.
“We have been waiting over a decade for the Army to make good on its promises to conduct meaningful studies to let us know if military training at Mākua is poisoning the food that we put on the table to feed our keiki (children) and to identify cultural sites that military training threatens to destroy,” said Mālama Mākua president Sparky Rodrigues. “We’re pleased that the court will be now be keeping tabs on the Army to make sure we finally get accurate information about the harm to public health and cultural sites that military training at Mākua can cause.”
Mālama Mākua is a non-profit, community organization based on the Wai‘anae Coast of O‘ahu. Formed in 1992 to oppose the Army’s open burn/open detonation permit application to the EPA, Mālama Mākua has continued to monitor military activities at Mākua and has participated in a number of community initiatives to care for the land and resources at Mākua.
Earthjustice is the nation’s leading non-profit environmental law firm. The Mid-Pacific Office opened in Honolulu in 1988 and represents environmental, Native Hawaiian, and community organizations. Earthjustice is the only non-profit environmental law firm in Hawai‘i and the Mid-Pacific and does not charge clients for its services.
Fred Dodge of Mālama Mākua announced:
The 18th Annual Christmas Vigil for Peace and Restoration of the Aina will be held on December 25 at 3 PM at the main gate of Makua Valley.
This wll be followed by a potluck celebration.
Please join us in celebrating this season of peace as well as showing aloha for this special aina. All are welome.
Questions? Contact Fred Dodge
Email: makuakauka@hotmail.com
Or call 696-4677.
On September 28, a wildfire caused by an Army detonation of unexploded ordnance burned 100 acres in Makua Valley:
A fire burned about 100 acres of the Army’s Makua Valley training range Wednesday after it was started by workers who had detonated unexploded ordnance.
An Army spokesman said the detonation was part of a routine, ongoing cleanup operation. No one was injured. The fire was contained about 4 p.m.
No threatened or endangered species or native Hawaiian cultural sites were affected, according to an Army cultural resoucre official at the scene, the Army said.
This week, the court ruled that the Army failed to adequately study possible contamination of seaweed in the sea off Makua training area. The Civil Beat reports “Army Can’t say Whether Hawaii Seafood Is Safe”:
Waianae-area residents still can’t be certain whether seafood they harvest off their shore is safe from dangerous levels of arsenic and lead. A federal judge has ruled that Army tests of possible contamination have fallen short and advocates for the community say more tests likely will be necessary.
Contractors hired by the U.S. Army to test whether 80 years of military operations had poisoned local residents’ seafood attempted to test seafood including fish, limu, sea cucumbers and octopus without diving into the water to collect specimens, according to an environmental law firm that sued the Army.
But the contractors never left the beach and the testing was inadequate, said David Henkin, an attorney with Earthjustice representing Malama Makua, a local community organization.
[…]
“What’s really sad is for a community to have to get into federal court and spend over a decade to battle the military,” said Sparky Rodgrigues, president of Malama Makua and a Vietnam veteran. “I went to battle hoping I wouldn’t have to come home to battle.”
Bullets and unexploded ordnance are strewn throughout the Makua Military Reservation where the Army has been doing military exercises since the 1920s. Residents worry that chemicals such as arsenic, lead, chrome and uranium from the artillery could be leaching into the soil and entering the ocean through runoff. Rodrigues said that the chemicals could also be released into the air and absorbed into plants.
The court order supplements an October 2010 ruling in which Mollway also ruled that the Army had failed to adequately test marine resources. While the military found high levels of arsenic in a previous test of seafood, officials didn’t test whether it was inorganic arsenic, and thus highly carcinogenic, or organic, which doesn’t pose a human health risk.
The 2010 ruling also said that the Army violated a separate settlement obligation to complete archeological surveys to determine whether cultural resources could be damaged by stray shells and mortar rounds.
The military has been banned from doing live round firing since 2004 and is unlikely to be able to resume the activities until the testing is complete.
Rodrigues said the military wasn’t being good neighbors “by contaminating the water, food source and environment.”
“The military takes from our community and doesn’t really give back,” said Rodgrigues.
The AP reports:
A federal judge has ruled the Army’s study of contamination of seafood harvested near Makua Valley was satisfactory except for two ways.
U.S. District Court Judge Susan Oki Mollway ruled the Army didn’t test seaweed and other marine life eaten by residents of the Waianae Coast to determine whether they pose health risks from live-fire military training at Makua.
[…]
Friday’s ruling says the Army violated the settlement agreement by only testing species of seaweed that Waianae residents don’t eat and not testing “other marine resources” such as octopus and sea cucumber.
The new commanding general of the U.S. Army Pacific may be softening his position with regard to live fire training in Makua. The Honolulu Star Advertiser reports:
There may be no Army live-fire training in Makua Valley for years to come, and possibly never again, the new commanding general of the U.S. Army in the Pacific said.
Lt. Gen. Francis J. Wiercinski, who took over the Fort Shafter-based command in March, said he’s focusing on providing replacement live-fire training for Hawaii soldiers through range improvements at Schofield Barracks and at Pohakuloa Training Area on Hawaii island.
“I firmly believe that if those things stay on track at Schofield and PTA, we will not have to live fire in Makua,” Wiercinski said in a recent interview.
Additionally, Wiercinski is putting on hold his predecessor’s plan to convert Makua into a “world-class” roadside bomb and counterinsurgency training center as the Army continues to deal with litigation that has prevented live fire in the 4,190-acre Waianae Coast valley since 2004.
“I’m not going to move forward with disrupting anything or trying to add another element to this until we get the first steps done,” he said. “I don’t want to complicate what’s already in the court system.”
But Makua is still being held hostage as insurance against delays in the expansion of training areas in Lihu’e (Schofield) and Pohakuloa, which pits communities and islands against one another. There have been major changes in the army’s command structure that shifted more training and operations to the U.S. Army Pacific:
U.S. Army Pacific oversees issues such as Makua Valley, but also has taken on greater responsibilities across the region.
Troop levels in Alaska and Hawaii have increased as numbers have dropped in South Korea. A series of sub-commands has been added in Hawaii that has bolstered Fort Shafter’s command and control role as an administrative and deployable headquarters.
In years past, U.S. Army Pacific “never really participated in exercises as a headquarters, never participated in operations as a headquarters,” Wiercinski said.
It was always a service component command, meaning it did all of the administrative functions.
“For the first time in the last couple of years, it’s become operationalized,” Wiercinski said. “It gives (U.S. Pacific Command) an extra set of headquarters to be able to do things at a moment’s notice.”
This shift has meant an expansion of Fort Shafter as the Army Pacific headquarters:
In 2001, Fort Shafter had 1,194 soldier “billets,” or positions, and a total population of 4,077, including families and civilian workers, officials said.
That population now stands at 6,306 military members with a total Fort Shafter census of 13,172, according to the command.
While the U.S. tries to reinforce its military presence in east Asia in order to contain China, it is also withdrawing and realigning forces to Guam and Hawai’i in response to protest in Korea, Japan and Okinawa. The realignment of forces in Korea is having negative repercussions for Hawai’i:
The Eighth Army is becoming a combat unit in a return to its Korean War-era roots.
Fort Shafter will exercise the service component command change with the Eighth Army in August.
For an increase in soldiers in Hawaii, firing ranges have been added at Schofield and a Battle Area Complex for Stryker vehicle training is expected to be completed in late 2012, officials said.
Meanwhile, a new Infantry Platoon Battle Area at PTA that could permanently replace Makua Valley might be ready for use in 2014 or 2015, the Army said.
Jim Albertini of Malu ‘Aina released the following message in response to the Army’s announcement that it will renege on a decision to no longer use Makua for live fire training:
The Big Lie!
Lt. General Francis J. Wiercinski, Commanding General U.S. Army Pacific, was quoted in an Associated Press news story on June 19, 2011 as saying: “… I don’t think anybody does it better than us when it comes to protecting the environment and being cognizant and protective of cultural sites.”
Adolf Hitler coined the phrase “The Big Lie” in 1925 for a lie so “colossal” that no one would believe that someone “could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously.” Sixteen years later, on Jan. 12, 1941 Hitler’s propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, wrote: “When one lies, one should lie big, and stick to it … even at the risk of looking ridiculous.”
Someone needs to tell General Wiercinski that he looks ridiculous. A few examples:
- In Hawaii, the Army secretively tested chemical and biological weapons, including deadly Sarin nerve gas) in Hilo’s watershed, and other sites in Hawaii. The Army did this on State land in the Waiakea Forest Reserve, with a lease to do “weather” testing. The Army Lied.
- The Army secretly used Depleted Uranium (DU) weapons in Hawaii and contaminated the land with radiation. For years the Army denied using such weapons in Hawaii. How much DU was used, and the extent of radiation contamination in Hawaii, is still in question. The Army has been stonewalling community concerns on DU.
- More than 14 million live-rounds are fired annually at the Pohakuloa Training Area (PTA) according to an Army EIS report of several years ago. The live rounds include everything from small arms fire, to cannons, fighter jets, bombers, etc. And recent news reports talk of doubling the training at PTA. How many live rounds fired annually are planned for PTA? Where is the bonding of funds for clean-up when the base is shut down? And General, please explain how bombing the land and waging wars for oil is protecting the environment.
General Wiercinski, if you want to be taken seriously, our organization challenges you to support and fund comprehensive, independent testing and monitoring with citizen oversight lead by Dr. Lorrin Pang, MD (retired Army Medical Corps) to determine the full extent of radiation contamination at PTA, Makua Valley, and Schofield Barracks.
Finally, our organization does not appreciate your attempt to pit one island’s opposition against another. We are opposed to pushing U.S. desecration and contamination from one site to another in Hawaii or anywhere. We want an end to U.S. occupation in Hawaii and the restoration of the Hawaii nation. We want the U.S. to stop bombing Hawaii and clean up its opala. We want to put an end to U.S. desecration and contamination of all sacred cultural sites. We do not want the U.S. training anywhere to do to others what the U.S. has already done to Hawaii: overthrow and occupy its government and nation, desecrate its sacred sites, and contaminate its air, land, water, people, plants, and animals with military toxins.
The truth is the U.S. military, (Army included) is the world’s largest polluter and destroyer (not protector) of the environment and culture the world has ever seen.
Jim Albertini
Malu ‘Aina Center for Non-violent Education & Action
P.O.Box AB
Kurtistown, Hawai’i 96760
phone: 808-966-7622
email: JA@interpac.net
Visit us on the web at: www.malu-aina.org
As our friends in Vieques, Puerto Rico have reminded us, history has proven that we cannot believe what the military says. The new commander of the U.S. Army Pacific may renege on the decision by his predecessor to end live fire training in Makua valley. The AP reports:
The top U.S. Army commander in the Pacific wants to be sure Hawaii-based soldiers have alternate locations for live-fire training before he’ll write off using Makua — a valley many Native Hawaiians consider sacred — for that purpose.
In his first interview since taking command of U.S. Army Pacific, Lt. Gen. Francis J. Wiercinski told The Associated Press that he won’t send soldiers to Makua Valley to train with live ammunition so long as the Army finishes building training ranges in central Oahu and the Big Island on time.
But Wiercinski said he would need to keep his options open on Makua in case the construction of new ranges at Schofield Barracks and Pohakuloa Training Area is delayed.
“If we are successful in completing the live-fire areas on Schofield, if we are successful in completing all of the live-fire areas on PTA that we need,” Wiercinski said, he’ll not be forced to open up live-fire training on Makua. “But if we don’t get that, then I’m forced to look at other ways to get live-fire throughput for all of our units here in Hawaii.”
So Makua is being held hostage until the Army can complete its destructive expansion in Lihu’e (Schofield) and Pohakuloa. This is how the divide-and-conquer approach has been used against communities in Hawai’i, and between Hawai’i and other places in the region.
Construction in Lihu’e and Pohakuloa has been delayed by the cultural sites and iwi kupuna (human remains) as well as the discovery of Depleted Uraniuim (DU) in both places.