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Military Waste Found Near Reservations

By NICHOLAS K. GERANIOS, Associated Press Writer

SPOKANE, Wash. - The last major push by the U.S. Army against American Indian tribes took place in the late 1800s. But a new report finds the military still poses a danger to American Indians.

The study contends the dramatic expansion of U.S. military bases during the 20th century was largely concentrated in the same remote, arid places in the West where tribal reservations were located.

That means Indians could be disproportionately exposed to toxic chemicals and unexploded bombs compared to non-Indians, according to the report by Gregory Hooks of Washington State University and a former graduate student, Chad Smith, now of Texas State University-San Marcos.

Two world wars and the Cold War "pushed the United States to produce, test and deploy weapons of unprecedented toxicity," the study said. "Native Americans have been left exposed to the dangers of this toxic legacy."

The study, published in American Sociological Review, is based on geography, not on actual data showing whether Indians are more often injured by unexploded bombs, Hooks said. Such studies remain to be conducted, he said.

Using Defense Department data on closed military bases in the Lower 48 states — including bombing ranges, weapons testing and storage sites — researchers discovered the locations deemed most hazardous "lay within close proximity to Indian reservations," the report said.

The study only considered closed military bases because security concerns make it impossible to learn of environmental hazards at functioning military bases, Hooks said.

As a result, military facilities like Washington's Yakima Training Center, Whidbey Island Naval Air Station and Fort Lewis, all of which are located near Indian reservations, were not considered in the study, Hooks said.

That raises the possibility that dangers to Indians are even greater than what was found in the report, he said.

The Department of Defense (news - web sites) has acknowledged the problems, the report said, quoting a 2001 department report that said Indian lands have "hazardous materials, unexploded ordnance (UXO), abandoned equipment, unsafe buildings, and debris."

The government estimates that unexploded ordnance, which can include mines, nerve gases and explosive shells, probably contaminates 20 million to 50 million acres of land in the United States and would take centuries to clean up at current rates.

Numerous past studies have shown that minority groups often face so-called "environmental racism" from dangerous factories and other commercial facilities because poverty limits the places where they can afford to live.

In Indian country, Indians typically did not choose the sites of their reservations, and the toxic wastes were created not by private industry but by the military.

This study is the first to show that Indian tribes in remote areas have faced the same sort of environmental discrimination as people in urban areas, Hooks said.

The study noted the U.S. military expanded dramatically into Indian country for much of the 20th century. That's because they were looking for areas that were remote, unpopulated and already owned by the federal government.

Jerry Vincent, who oversees cleanup of formerly used military sites in California for the Army Corps of Engineers in Sacramento, Calif., said that remote military sites that might be near Indian reservations get a low priority for limited cleanup funds because of the low population.

"We focus on areas with the greatest risk for the largest population," Vincent said, naming California sites near Los Angeles, San Diego and Palm Springs.

The counties of Imperial, Los Angeles, San Bernardino and San Diego in California and Chaves and Luna in New Mexico were singled out in the new report for having large amounts of unexploded ordnance.

The report found that those six counties averaged 10.5 dangerous sites each, compared with 0.12 dangerous sites for each of the other 3,130 counties in the lower 48 states.

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