Key Step to Clean Up Vieques Survives in Catastrophically Awful Military Bill
DECEMBER 11, 2019 BY DAVID SWANSON
First the good news.
If one of the worst pieces of legislation ever drafted becomes law, there is one small measure in it that we can be pleased with. RootsAction.org and World BEYOND War and many other organizations and activists from Puerto Rico and the rest of the United States and beyond urged Congress through a petition and a variety of lobbying approaches to provide $10 million for the purchase of closed detonation chambers in the clean-up of military contamination in Vieques, Puerto Rico.
This was one of dozens of positive measures passed by the House of Representatives but not by the Senate. Unlike most such measures, this one survived the “compromise” between the two versions of the bill.
The bombing practices in Vieques ended in 2003. But this other “bombing,” open-air detonation under the guise of “cleanup,” has continued. We asked Congress to put an end to OB/OD (open burning/open detonation) of munitions, which releases toxins into the environment and sickens the local population. Led by Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, members of Congress managed to make this one item stick.
For once Puerto Rico gets possibly the only thing good in a stinker of a potential law.
More:
http://warisacrime.org/2019/12/11/key-step-to-clean-up-vieques-survives-in-catastrophically-awful-military-bill/
