Het
grootste gevaar voor Hawaï komt niet van Noord-Koreaanse 'kernraketten', maar van het
VS leger dat daar met enorme aantallen militairen is gestationeerd. 75 jaar
geleden werden er enorme ondergrondse brandstoftanks geconstrueerd op
het eiland Oahu en zoals te verwachten was, door corrosie dreigen die
tanks lek te raken......
Eerder
gebeurde dit op een Californische luchtmachtbasis, waarna de tanks
werden vervangen door nieuwe, lullig genoeg moest daar eerst 1,5
miljoen gallons aan brandstof voor weglekken........ (een gallon is
iets meer dan 3,7854 liter ofwel het gaat hier om meer dan 5,5
miljoen liter brandstof.....)
Echter ook op Oahu is in 2014 een hoeveelheid van 27.000 gallons aan brandstof weggelekt...... Intussen worden er al sporen van petroleum gevonden in het drinkwater, wat volgens de autoriteiten geen gevaar vormt voor de volksgezondheid........* De tanks liggen op een zeer korte afstand van het zich daaronder bevindende drinkwater....
Niet
vreemd dus dat de bevolking van Hawaï en zeker van het eiland Oahu
eist dat het leger van de VS actie onderneemt, voordat de drinkwatervoorraad van Oahu voorgoed is verpest.........
In
het volgende artikel van Ann Wright, eerder verschenen op CommonDreams en door mij overgenomen van Greed, beschrijft ze naast het
risico die de brandstoftanks vormen, o.a. de situatie op Hawaï waar zoals gezegd een enorm aantal militairen is gelegerd.
IS THE U.S. MILITARY A LARGER THREAT TO HAWAII THAN NORTH KOREAN MISSILES?
United
States (CD)
– After
the big North Korean missile scare in Hawaii a year ago, one would
think that missiles are the greatest threat to the island of Oahu.
Yet, it’s not missiles that are the threat, it’s our own U.S.
military and its massive jet fuel storage tanks that are leaking into
Oahu’s drinking water aquifer.
A
complex of mammoth 20-story military jet fuel storage tanks buried
twenty stories down in a bluff called Red Hill are perched only 100
feet above Honolulu’s water supply. The walls on the
75-year-old jet fuel tanks are now so thin that the edge of a dime is
thicker. Each of the twenty tanks holds 12.5 million gallons of
jet fuel, although eighteen are in operation now. 225,000,000
gallons of jet fuel in total are a mere 100 feet from causing a
catastrophic disaster for the island of Oahu.
In
fact, disaster has already struck when in 2014, 27,000 gallons of jet
fuel leaked from a tank that had been repaired with a welded patch.
The welding gave way and tens of thousands of gallons of fuel leaked
into the water supply. Over the years, studies have documented
leaks dating back to 1947, the continued corrosion of the tank liners
and the risk of a catastrophic fuel release.
Drinking
water is currently safe to drink, but traces of petroleum chemicals
are being detected in
the groundwater near the tanks.
Concerned
citizens on the island, have for decades been trying to get the U.S.
Navy to take the dangerous tanks out of Red Hill. The military
states that the underground fuel tanks are of strategic importance to
U.S. national security and they are being maintained as good as
75-year old tanks can be. Yet, those who live on Oahu say: “That’s
not good enough! You can’t have national security by jeopardizing
the health security of your citizens.”
It
is not surprising that the U.S. Navy has made little effort to remove
the tanks and put replacements in a less dangerous place. The
military’s hold on the island of Oahu and its politicians is very
strong both psychologically and economically. Oahu is filled with
U.S. military bases and their accompanying corporations that supply
the military with equipment and services.
The
state of Hawaii is one of the most militarized states in the nation
and Oahu is one of the most militarized islands with seven major U.S.
military bases and a total of
36,620 military personnel: Army 16,313, Navy 7,792 (drop
of 8,000 from 2015), Marines 6,370 and Air Force 4,937,
Coast Guard 1208.
When
the 64,000 military family members and military contractors are
added to the active duty military, the military-industrial complex on
Oahu numbers about 100,000, which is 10 percent of Oahu’s total
population of 988,000. The state of Hawaii has only1.4
million citizens.
The
U.S. military installations on the island of Oahu began being
constructed soon after the overthrow of the sovereign nation of
Hawaii by U.S. businessmen and a small contingent of U.S. Marines:
–Pearl
Harbor Naval Base- headquarters of the US Pacific Fleet Navy and is
the homeport for
25 warships,15 attack submarines, nine guided-missile destroyers and
a guided-missile cruiser;
–Hickam
Air Force Base- headquarters of the US Pacific Air Forces and
has squadrons of
F-15s, F22, C-17 and B-2 bombers;
—Camp
Smith-headquarters
of the United Indo-Pacific Command which is responsible for
all U.S. military activity in the greater Asia and Pacific region
including India, Camp Smith is also the headquarters of the U.S.
Marine Corps Forces, Pacific.
—Asia-Pacific
Center for
Security Studies-military educational facility for military and
civilian officials from countries from Asia and the Pacific for
courses on international security strategy.
—Tripler
Army Medical Center and
Veterans Administration Medical Center-provides medical assistance to
active duty military and veterans.
—
U.S.
Coast Guard 14th District for the Pacific (while not part of the
Department of Defense-, during wartime, the Coast Guard can go under
command of DOD)- three 225-foot buoy tenders, four 110-foot patrol
boats, two 87-foot coastal patrol boats, four small boat stations,
two sector commands, an air station, a Far East command, five
detachments and over 400 aids to navigation.
Major
military installations have been built on other islands of Hawaii.
The Puhakaloa
Training Area,
the largest U.S. military training area in the world with 133,000
acres for artillery, mortar, small arms and crew-served weapons
firing is located on the Big Island of Hawaii. U.S. Air Force
bombers flying from the continental U.S. drop ordnance on the area
between the two volcanoes of the island of Hawaii.
On
the island of Kauai, the Pacific Missile Range Facility Barking Sands
(PMRF) is the world’s largest range capable of supporting surface,
submarines, aircraft, and space operations simultaneously. PMRF has
over 1,100 square miles of instrumented underwater range and over
42,000 square miles of controlled airspace. The Navy is
currently using PMRF to test “hit to kill” technology using
direct collision of the anti-ballistic missile with its target
destroying the target by using only kinetic energy from the
force of the collision. The Navy’s Aegis Ballistic Missile
Defense System and
the Army’s Terminal High Altitude Area Defense System, or
THAAD are tested on Kauai at PMRF.
On
the island of Maui, the Maui High-Performance Computing Center,
a Department of Defense Supercomputing Resource Center managed by the
Air Force Research Laboratory and supporting the High-Performance
Computing Modernization Program, provided DoD scientists and
engineers with one of the world’s largest computers to solve
war-making computational problems.
According
to the Hawaii Chamber of Commerce, the economic direct and indirect
impacts of military expenditures in Hawaii generate $14.7 billion
into Hawaii’s economy, creating more than 102,000 jobs. The
military’s investments in Hawaii totals $8.8 billion. Military
procurement contracts amount to about $2.3 billion annually, making
it a prime source of contracting opportunities for hundreds of
Hawaii’s small businesses, including significant military
construction projects.
The
power of the U.S. military on issues in the Hawaiian Islands and its
politicians at all levels cannot be underestimated, nor can the
protection the military is given by its retirees and the citizens who
benefit from it. The pressure on city and state officials to accept
the status quo is very strong.
Finally,
the U.S. government has acknowledged the medical problems the
contamination of the drinking supply caused at another community- the
huge U.S. Marine Base at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina and Marine
Corps Air Station (MCAS) New River, North Carolina. From 1953
through 1987, tens of thousands of Marines and their families were
contaminated by two on-base water wells that were contaminated with
trichloroethylene (TCE), perchloroethylene (PCE), benzene, vinyl
chloride among other compounds from
on-base leaking storage tanks and an off-base dry cleaner.
At
long last, the Veterans Administration has acknowledged the dangerous
situation on the bases in North Carolina that was ignored for
decades. The VA has declared that a large number of diseases
are caused by the chemicals and that military and family members who
have contracted these diseases and who are still living will be
compensated. We can expect the same type of diseases with the
continuing leaks at Red Hill:
- Aplastic anemia and other myelodysplastic syndromes
- Bladder cancer
- Breast cancer
- Esophageal cancer
- Female infertility
- Hepatic steatosis
- Kidney cancer
- Leukemia
- Lung cancer
- Miscarriage
- Multiple myeloma
- Myelodysplastic syndromes
- Neurobehavioral effects
- Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma
- Renal toxicity
- Scleroderma
- Parkinson’s Disease
On
the other side of the country from North Carolina, the Navy has
already closed down one complex of underground jet fuel storage tanks
at Point Loma, California, which had 54 storage tanks. The
riveted seams on the underground tanks began leaking as they aged.
When 1.5 million gallons of fuel spilled from the site in 2006, the
U.S. Navy was decided to replace the tanks.
For
us on Oahu, the bottom line is that when, not if, the massive jet
fuel storage tanks leak into the aquifer of Honolulu, city, state and
federal officials must be held accountable– the public has given
them plenty of warning of their concerns. As with lead in the
water supply in Flint, Michigan lead, officials knew that the
drinking water was contaminated but didn’t do anything to stop the
community from using it. Remarkably, none of the Flint officials have
gone to jail yet, but the community is demanding accountability for
malfeasance in office—which would be the same in Honolulu when
disaster strikes on the jet fuel storage tanks.
So,
we the citizens ask our elected leaders, why do they allow such a
disaster continue to threaten our water supply in Honolulu when we
know that 75-year-old tanks with corroding walls are continuing to
leak.
I
will make this personal.
I
am 72 years old and served 29 years in the U.S. military. I retired
20 years ago. The twenty jet fuel storage tanks are 75 years
old and have served each of those 75 years and are still serving.
At
72, I have had the normal number of aches and pains including a hip
replacement that didn’t turn out the best and skin cancer surgery
that left skin grafts and patches on my face, head and leg.
At
75, the twenty-story jet fuel storage tanks also have had aches and
pains as well as their skin getting thinner and thinner due to seven
decades of corrosion. Their skin or walls are as thin as
the edge of a dime in some places. Patching of the thin skin of
the Red Hill jet fuel tanks didn’t turn out so well either, with
the welding on one of the patches giving way in 2014 and 27,000
gallons of jet fuel leaking out of the tanks jeopardizing the
Honolulu aquifer.
Those
of us in our 70s, whether we are fuel tanks or humans, know all about
leaks—it’s a hazard of age.
I
retired from the U.S. Army after 29 years of service. After 75
years of service, it’s time to retire the leaking Red Hill Storage
tanks—and protect our precious water supply.
Ann
Wright is
a 29 year US Army/Army Reserves veteran who retired as a Colonel and
a former US diplomat who resigned in March, 2003 in opposition to the
war on Iraq. She served in Nicaragua, Grenada, Somalia,
Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Sierra Leone, Micronesia and Mongolia.
In December, 2001 she was on the small team that reopened the US
Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan. She is the co-author of the
book "Dissent:
Voices of Conscience."
(www.voicesofconscience.com) ============================================
* Het cliché 'geen gevaar voor de volksgezondheid', een cliché dat keer op keer wordt gebruikt door autoriteiten, terwijl dit cliché voor zoveel soorten van chemische stoffen wordt gebruikt, dat men uit het oog verliest dat al die beetjes chemische stoffen, die 'geen gevaar voor de volksgezondheid zouden vormen', zich stapelen in ons lichaam en op den duur uiteraard wel een groot gevaar vormen voor de volksgezondheid........ (neem alle gifsoorten op groente en fruit, gifstoffen in
PS: overigens totaal belachelijk dat Hawaï een staat van de VS is!
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