United States Navy in Vieques, Puerto Rico
The Vieques, Puerto Rico, Naval Training Range was a United States naval facility located on the island of Vieques, about east of mainland Puerto Rico. Starting in November 1941, the navy used the range for military exercises. Military operations ended in 2001, with the Navy completely leaving the area in 2003.
The operations were repeatedly protested by locals, for concerns related to the environmental damage and related health consequences caused by using the area for ordnance practice. These protests reached national attention during the Navy–Vieques protests in 1999. Upon the shutdown of the military operations, there was a cleanup process that was continuing into the mid 2010s and the ongoing cleanup costs were some of the most expensive decommissioned sites being cleaned up by the military. However, the landscape still is heavily contaminated with chemicals, depleted uranium and other materials, especially in the former ordinance area.
Searching for a location
The Department of the Navy started searching for a location to situate a naval base during the 1940s. Land was sold at a fair price to wealthy land owners at a fixed price while other smaller native land owners and tenant farmers were sometimes not compensated for their land, and relocated elsewhere on the island or forced to leave. The acquiring of land happened between 1941 and 1950, consisting of two parcels making up 22,000 acres or about two-thirds of the island. Of that, 8,000 acres on the western end of the island was primarily used as a naval ammunition depot until the property was returned to the Municipality of Vieques on May 1, 2001.The eastern end of the island was used for live training exercises, ship-to-shore gunfire, air-to-ground bombing and US Marine amphibious landings starting from the 1940s onward. Within that area was a 900-acre Live Impact Area used for targeting live ordnance. The LIA was located at the eastern tip of the island and away from the civilian population.
Description of the Navy's facilities
The former Vieques Naval Training Range is located on the eastern half and the former Naval Ammunition Support Detachment is located on the western one-third of the island. Located between these military sites lay the local civilian communities of Isabel Segunda and Esperanza.Operations on East Vieques
Operations on West Vieques
Military operations on the west side of the island had been focused on storing and processing of supplies and the disposal of waste. Sites identified for environmental clean-up include the following:- A former general waste dump at a mangrove swamp in Laguna Arenas along Highway 200.
- The site of a 1970 underground storage tank for waste oil removed from the former public works area in 1996.
- A former asphalt plant on the south side of Route 200, which operated from the 1960s until 1998.
Base closure and clean-up
After the base was closed, Puerto Rico Governor Sila Calderon requested Vieques be placed on the U.S. National Priorities List as a designated superfund clean-up site. the EPA has listed the following contaminants and ordnances at the western portion of the naval station: unexploded ordnance UXO, remnants of exploded ordnance, mercury, lead, copper, magnesium, lithium, napalm, depleted uranium along with other unspecified materials. In addition to these, the eastern portion of the site "may also include" polychlorinated biphenyls, solvents and pesticides.Both US Navy and EPA are coordinating efforts to clean up Vieques.
the Navy was to "conduct an environmental investigation of its previously owned property under the federal Resource Conservation and Recovery Act to determine what cleanup actions" were needed. The EPA has provided "technical assistance and guidance to the Navy on environmental issues related to the land transfer in western Vieques." Early on it was noted that, it would be difficult to discover what measures the U.S. must take, because thick jungle growth hampers testing for contaminants. Furthermore, jungle growth cannot be easily removed because the forests are littered with unexploded ordnance.
For the remainder of Fiscal Year 2015 Congress appropriated $17 million for the cleanup of Vieques, and $1.4 million for the cleanup of Culebra. As of 2014, the Navy has spent about $220 million since 2003, to investigate and clean contaminated lands on Vieques. Since 2007, about half of the money budgeted for munitions removal has been awarded to 23 local companies in Puerto Rico. As of 2014, "the Navy spends more money each year to clean up Vieques than it is spending to clean up any other former Navy installation in the US" and clean-up efforts are to continue through 2032.
Protests against U.S. Navy 1999
In 1999, protests began against the use of the Vieques for bombing practice by the United States Navy and United States Marine Corps after David Sanes, a civilian employed as a security guard by the US Navy, died from a stray bomb while observing a routine exercise. As a consequence of this many Vieques citizens and Puerto Rican activists from other towns began activism against the military presence in Vieques, which included illegally entering the live -fire areas at the military reservation. Other important activists calling for closure of the facility included Jesse Jackson, Robert Kennedy Jr., Al Sharpton, US Representative Luis Gutiérrez D-IL, US Representative Nydia Velázquez D-NY, Rigoberta Menchú and Edward James Olmos.President Clinton asked Secretary of Defense William Cohen to establish a special panel to study the situation. The four-member panel was chaired by Frank Rush, the then-acting Assistant Secretary of Defense for force management policy, and is consequently sometimes called the Rush panel. The panel laid out history and legal situation, and released its report with 11 recommendations on October 19, 1999.
In January 2000, President Clinton and then Governor of Puerto Rico, Pedro Rosselló, together called for a referendum on Vieques. This was first scheduled for November 2001, and then rescheduled for January 2002. The referendum would let voters choose to either end the military's use of the range by May 2003, or alternatively, allow military operations to continue indefinitely.
On April 27, 2001, the Navy resumed operations and protesting resumed. On June 14, 2001, the George W. Bush administration ordered the end of military training operations on Vieques in May 2003. The Bush decision superseded previous actions of the Clinton Administration.
Fort Bundy which was part in the Roosevelt Roads Naval Station and partially on Vieques, was also affected by the protests. President George W. Bush granted Puerto Rico the rights to operate the former military possessions in Vieques, including Fort Bundy. As a consequence of President Bush's decision, the Roosevelt Roads Naval Station became NAPR, where DoD Police provided security, but remained a military installation.
The protesters were ultimately successful: in May 2003, the Atlantic Fleet Weapons Training Facility on Vieques Island was closed, and in May 2004, the U.S. Navy's last remaining base on Puerto Rico, the Roosevelt Roads Naval Station – which employed 1,000 local contractors and contributed $300 million to the local economy – was closed.
Protester history
David Sanes
On April 19, 1999, a civilian employee named David Sanes Rodríguez was killed when military ordnance was dropped too close to his security post. According to a Congressional research report, a Marine Corps F-18 dropped two 500-pound bombs striking the security post killing Rodriguez and injuring four others. The F-18 was on a training mission when the incident occurred. The Congressional report states the ordnance was dropped "within the overall range perimeter." After this incident the range was temporarily closed.The death of Rodriguez triggered a wave of protests from local residents. Then U.S. President Clinton promised, later reiterated by his successor George W. Bush, that the navy would leave Vieques by May 2003.
Encampments
A few months after Sanes's death, small wooden structures were erected inside the practice grounds, and encampments from all over the island-municipality started to attract attention.By that time, the protests had also started to gain international attention, and people from all over the world joined the struggle. Many celebrities, including the political leader Ruben Berrios, singers Danny Rivera, Robi Draco Rosa and Ricky Martin, boxer Félix "Tito" Trinidad, writers Ana Lydia Vega and Giannina Braschi, American actor Edward James Olmos and Guatemala's Nobel Prize winner Rigoberta Menchú supported the cause, as did Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Al Sharpton, and the Rev. Jesse Jackson. Pope John Paul II once said that he wanted peace for Vieques. The Archbishop of San Juan, Roberto González Nieves, was heavily involved in the protests that took place in the municipality. He managed to put together a coalition of different Puerto Rican church leaders that gathered international attention. Olmos, Sharpton and Kennedy also served jail time; while serving his prison term in Puerto Rico, Kennedy's wife Mary gave birth to the couple's sixth child, a son they named Aidan Caohman Vieques Kennedy.
The Movimiento Socialista de Trabajadores held a series of incursions into the bombing ranges to halt the bombing without being arrested, and a few of them were successful in that second objective.