by Abrahm Lustgarten
In August 2016, an
inspector from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency arrived at
Barksdale Air Force base in Louisiana, a nerve center for the U.S.
military’s global air combat operations, to conduct a routine look at
the base’s handling of its hazardous waste.
Barksdale, like many military bases, generates large volumes of
hazardous materials, including thousands of pounds of toxic powder left
over from cleaning, painting and maintaining airplanes.
For years, Barksdale had been sending a portion of its waste to an
Ohio company, U.S. Technology Corp., that had sold officials at the base
on a seemingly ingenious solution for disposing of it: The company
would take the contaminated powder from refurbished war planes and
repurpose it into cinderblocks that would be used to build everything
from schools to hotels to big-box department stores — even a pregnancy
support center in Ohio. The deal would ostensibly shield the Air Force
from the liabililty of being a large producer of dangerous hazardous
trash.
The arrangement was not unique.
The military is one of the country’s largest polluters, with an
inventory of toxic sites on American soil that once topped 39,000. At
many locations, the Pentagon has relied on contractors like U.S.
Technology to assist in cleaning and restoring land, removing waste,
clearing unexploded bombs, and decontaminating buildings, streams and
soil. In addition to its work for Barksdale, U.S. Technology had won
some 830 contracts with other military facilities — Army, Air Force,
Navy and logistics bases — totaling more than $49 million, many of them
to dispose of similar powders.
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Source: ProPublica
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