Greenland pissed cause US military won't clean up it's toxic mess

[ensho]

http://features.csmonitor.com/environment/2008/08/22/us-cold-war-waste-irks-greenland/


US cold-war waste irks Greenland
Pentagon refuses to clean up toxic military bases, saying it would set a bad precedent.



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“The US and Denmark together have a lot to clean up,” says Aleqa Hammond, foreign minister for Greenland’s home rule government. “It’s not even halfway done. The East Coast and icecap areas have thousands of abandoned barrels, and the failure to clean up the air base is something that is very heavy in our hearts.”

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The fjord near Thule Air Base has elevated radiation levels, the result of the 1968 crash of a B-52 carrying four hydrogen bombs. Danish workers who helped clean up from the crash weren’t given protective equipment, and some claim medical problems as a result. One of the H-bombs was apparently never recovered, a fact that provoked anger here in 2000, when it became public.

But in recent years, the most contentious issue has been the US refusal to clean up dump sites and other contamination on the Dundas Peninsula, which was turned over to Greenlandic control in 2003, 50 years after being incorporated into the adjacent Thule Air Base, 950 miles north of the Arctic Circle.

It’s a particularly emotional issue for Greenlanders, as an entire village was forced from their Dundas homes in May 1953 to make way for Thule’s expansion. Given little notice and scant support, dozens suffered for three months in tents before homes for them were completed.

For decades, former villagers say, Danish authorities claimed the inhabitants had consented to the relocation and covered up the actual circumstances.

“That land is rightfully theirs,” says Aqqaluk Lynge of the Inuit Circumpolar Council and author of “The Right of Return,” a book about the relocation. “It should be returned in the same condition as when they hunted there.”
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the US military is toxic and where ever it goes it leaves toxic waste.