"The military has a terrible, terrible record with regard to environmental safeguards," said Harvey Bernstein, who testified at Tuesday morning's hastily assembled Air Board meeting. "The military should be held accountable to all our laws."
Board members, all but two of whom "attended" the meeting by speaker phone, testified to the cost - in dollars and public health - of past negligence at military installations.
"There is a whole aquifer in central California polluted with trichloroethylene from an Air Force base," he said. "They took out an aquifer for a whole valley."
Missoula County Commissioner Jean Curtiss added the cautionary tale of a bay along the Wisconsin River that is polluted with mercury because of runoff from a military-run ammunition factory. The area is now a federal Superfund cleanup site.
As proposed, the Defense Authorization Bill for fiscal year 2004 would exempt the Department of Defense from a long list of environmental and public health laws, including the Clean Air Act, Superfund, Endangered Species Act, Marine Mammal Protection Act and the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act.
In the letter approved Tuesday - then shipped to Montana's congressional delegation - Air Board members said the Pentagon already has the authority to bypass laws in the interest of national security.
"DOD's proposed sweeping new exemptions would undermine the role of states that administer pollution control laws, and local communities that are directly impacted by DOD operations," the letter said. "It would also dramatically weaken protections for marine mammals and endangered species that were created to ensure species sustainability."
If approved by Congress later this week, the Defense Department's proposals would: strip the Environmental Protection Agency of any authority to protect public health and the environment from toxic contamination caused by military munitions; exempt groundwater, air and soil contamination from Superfund oversight; shift the entire burden for maintaining clean and healthy air to other agencies, private industry, small businesses and the public; and block any designation of critical habitat on military land.
"This legislation is too broad," said Air Board member Logan Blank. "In most cases, the military is entirely capable of upholding environmental regulations."
Reporter Sherry Devlin can be reached at 523-5268 or at sdevlin@missoulian.com
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