space Press Releases, News Stories

by Mike Gordon, Honolulu Advertiser

The Department of Defense chose Wake Island, which is 2,460 miles west of Honolulu, after briefly considering shipping the 110 tons of waste to Johnston Island.

Gerda Parr, a spokeswoman for the Defense Logistics Agency, yesterday said the waste will be stored on Wake Island for up to a year but also said there is no firm deadline for its removal.

Workers on the Air Force-controlled island will take the shipping containers that hold the waste and bolt them to concrete slabs, Parr said. The island sits 12 feet above sea level.

The waste was collected from U.S. military bases in Japan and includes surplus electric transformers, circuit breakers and other electrical equipment that contain traces of polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs. The chemicals are carcinogens that are hard to destroy.

The manufacture of PCBs is banned in the United States. A 1997 court ruling also bans the waste-disposal industry from importing them.

The Department of Defense originally planned to send the shipment to Canada but that effort met with the protests last month in Vancouver and Seattle. They are now trying to find a country that will allow them to import the waste for safe disposal, Parr said.

She would not identify any of the countries, however, saying that doing so would jeopardize negotiations.

Military officials say the laws leave them with a Catch-22 situation.

"We’ve created our own problem," said Col. John Smith, a spokesman for U.S. Army Pacific in Honolulu. "We took our hazardous materials out of the work place but now we’re stuck with it. The best thing we can do is destroy it, but no one will let us bring it in."

Smith said that ultimately the waste will be safely disposed.

"We’re not going to dump it out the back gate," he said.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service office in Honolulu had opposed the use of Johnston Island, which is home to a national wildlife refuge.

"We certainly are concerned about the wildlife resources there (Wake Island), but it is not a national wildlife refuge, like Johnston," said spokeswoman Barbara Maxfield. "We are not one of the players involved there."

But a Seattle-based environmental group, the Basel Action Network, blasted the military. Spokesman Jim Puckett said existing mobile technology allows for the destruction of PCBs outside the United States.

"Playing the global game of hide-and-seek with this waste is unacceptable, particularly when a viable, safe, on-site destruction technology is well in hand," he said. "We need a long-term solution. Rather than exporting and importing toxic wastes, we should, whenever possible, be exporting and importing proven, appropriate, safe waste-minimization and destruction technologies."