[CPEO-MEF] REUSE: "Decades Later, Closed Military Bases Remain a Toxic Menace"

[Lenny Siegel]

Decades Later, Closed Military Bases Remain a Toxic Menace
Cities hoped for new businesses and housing on former military sites. But many are still waiting for poisonous pollution to be cleaned up, a wait that for some may never come.

By Ralph Vartabedian
New York Times
September 27, 2023

For much of the 20th century, Fort Ord was one of the largest light infantry training bases in the country, a place where more than a million U.S. Army troops were schooled in the lethal skills of firing a mortar and aiming a rifle — discharging thousands of rounds a day into the scenic sand dunes along the coast of central California.

Later, when it became clear with the end of the Cold War that the colossal military infrastructure built up to fight the Soviet Union would no longer be necessary, Fort Ord was one of 800 U.S. military bases, large and small, that were shuttered between 1988 and 2005.

The cities of Seaside and Marina, Calif., where Fort Ord had been critical to the local economy, were left with a ghost town of clapboard barracks and decrepit, World War II-era concrete structures that neither of the cities could afford to tear down. Also left behind were poisonous stockpiles of unexploded ordnance, lead fragments, industrial solvents and explosives residue, a toxic legacy that in some areas of the base remains largely where the Army left it.

Across the country, communities were promised that closed bases would be restored, cleaned up and turned over for civilian use — creating jobs, spurring business growth and providing space for new housing.


…

For the entire article, see
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/27/us/military-base-closure-cleanup.html <https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/27/us/military-base-closure-cleanup.html>

—

Lenny Siegel
Executive Director
Center for Public Environmental Oversight
A project of the Pacific Studies Center
LSiegel at cpeo.org
P.O. Box 998, Mountain View, CA 94042
Voice/Fax: 650-961-8918
http://www.cpeo.org
Author: DISTURBING THE WAR: The Inside Story of the Movement to Get Stanford University out of Southeast Asia - 1965–1975 (See http://a3mreunion.org)

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