Defending the Environment

Under the guise of help to U.S. soldiers, the Department of Defense succeeded late last year in mostly exempting itself from laws that protect endangered species and marine mammals. Now the department is again before Congress asking that it not have to adhere to three federal laws aimed at protecting the air and ensuring that toxic waste is cleaned up.

The military argues that such laws hamper its readiness, although studies from both the Environmental Protection Agency and General Accounting Office say this isn’t so. The Defense Department, which controls 25 million acres across the country, should follow the same environmental laws as private companies and other government agencies.

Maine Sen. Susan Collins had steadfastly opposed the prior exemption requests and is now highly critical of the military’s attempt to exempt itself from the Clean Air Act, the Superfund law and a solid waste disposal law. She is expected to be the only Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee to vote against the law change this week.

“Absent compelling circumstances, the Department of Defense should be subject to our environmental laws,” Sen. Collins wrote in a strongly worded letter to the committee chairman, John Warner, a Virginia Republican.

Such “compelling circumstances” do not now exist. Last year, former EPA administrator Christie Todd Whitman told Congress, “I don’t believe there is a training mission anywhere in the country that is being held up or not taking place because of environmental protection regulation.” The General Accounting Office, the review arm of Congress, largely agreed. “Our analysis of readiness reports from active duty units in fiscal year 2001 showed that very few units reported being unable to achieve combat-ready status due to inadequate training areas,” the office wrote in a report on the subject.

First, lawmakers should know that the Pentagon has failed to show that these analyses are wrong. Second, they should look at the department’s environmental record. The Defense Department is responsible for 80 percent of the federal facilities on the National Priorities List, the Superfund tally of the most contaminated sites in the country.

Exempting the military from these three laws would mean that spent munitions, including chemical and depleted uranium weapons, could simply be left on the ground where they can leak. Further, if such contaminants found their way into groundwater, the EPA and state would be powerless to force the military to correct the situation.

As Sen. Collins writes in her letter: “Given that little is known regarding the adverse environmental consequences of munitions-related contamination, including the significant potential for groundwater contamination, these changes are ill-advised. … In sum, these provisions are likely to negatively affect the nation’s environmental quality, and would impair state and EPA authority to protect human health and the environment.”

She is right. Without any military gains, there is no need to weaken environmental laws, putting people – soldiers and civilians – at risk.