Maui bans displays of captive cetaceans
Captive Cetacean Displays Banned
by Becky A. Dayhuff
January 15, 2003
The County Council of Maui recently made the Hawaiian county the 17th
city or county in the United States to ban displays of captive
cetaceans.
“The Council finds that cetaceans (dolphins and whales) are highly
intelligent - and highly sensitive - marine mammals,” the legislation
prohibiting the displays states. “The Council further finds the presence
of cetaceans in the Pacific Ocean surrounding Maui County provides many
cultural, spiritual, and economic benefits to the County’s residents.
The Council also finds that the exhibition of captive cetaceans leads to
distress living conditions for these animals. Therefore, the purpose of
this ordinance is to prohibit the exhibition of captive cetaceans
(dolphins and whales).”
Violators are subject to imprisonment for not more than one year and
fines of as much as $1,000.
Hundreds of letters and a petition signed by more than 15,000
individuals calling for the ban had been received by the members of the
Council.
“This matter received more public support than any other matter in the
history of Maui County,” said Council member Jo Anne Johnson.
“Maui will now be recognized as a place where whales and dolphins will
all live free and in the wild,” said Council member Alan Arakawa. “This
decision proves we can do what is right.”
Sources
Environment News Service
www.ens-news.com/ens/nov2002/2002-11-18-09.asp#anchor5
Maui Bans Whale, Dolphin Exhibits
-------------------------------------------
From: http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/103402_fife09.shtml
Toxic ammo is tested in fish areas
U.S. Navy uses depleted uranium in coast waters
Activists may go to court
January 9, 2003
The Navy routinely tests a weapon by firing radioactive, toxic
ammunition
in prime fishing areas off the coast of Washington, raising concerns
from scientists, fishermen and activists.
The Navy insists the use of depleted uranium off the coast poses no
threat to the environment. Depleted uranium, known as DU, is a highly
dense metal that is the byproduct of the process during which
fissionable uranium used to manufacture nuclear bombs and reactor fuel
is separated from natural uranium. DU remains radioactive for about 4.5
billion years.
Cmdr. Karen Sellers, a Navy spokeswoman in Seattle, also said there are
no hazards to the servicemen and women on board the ships, adding that
“all crew members are medically monitored” to ensure their safety.
But a coalition of Northwest environmental and anti-war activists say
they are considering seeking an injunction to halt the tests.
“The Navy is willing to put us all at risk, including its own sailors,
to improve its war-fighting capabilities,” said Glen Milner, of Ground
Zero Center for Nonviolent Action, one of the groups weighing a suit to
stop the Navy tests. Milner received information on the Navy’s tests of
depleted uranium ammunition off the coast in a memo released in response
to a Freedom of Information Act request.
No major studies apparently have been done on the effects of such
weapons in the ocean. Where depleted uranium munitions have been used in
combat on land, such as in Iraq during the Gulf War, or in tests on
land, such as Vieques island in Puerto Rico, they not only give off
relatively small amounts of radiation, but produce toxic dust that can
enter the food chain.
Seattle environmental attorney David Mann asked, “How can the Navy fire
depleted uranium rounds and spread radioactive material into prime
fishing areas off our coast?”
Sellers, however, said that only 400 to 600 rounds would be fired during
a typical test at sea. And even though these tests have been going on
since 1977, she said Navy environmental experts say that the DU
dissolves very slowly in the ocean.
“It would be too diluted to distinguish from natural background uranium
in the sea water,” she said.
The weapon in question is the Phalanx, also known as a Close In Weapons
System. Such a system is on virtually all U.S. Navy combat ships. It
includes radar and rapid-fire 20mm guns. The guns are capable of firing
up to 3,000 or 4,500 rounds per minute of depleted uranium, a superhard
material prized for its armor-piercing ability.
The Defense Department says the military uses the munitions “because of
DU’s superior lethality against armor and other hard targets.”
Although depleted uranium emits radiation, a second, potentially more
serious hazard is created when a DU round hits a hard target. As much as
70 percent of the projectile can burn on impact, creating a firestorm of
ceramic DU oxide particles. The residue of this firestorm is an
extremely fine ceramic uranium dust that can be spread by the wind,
inhaled and absorbed into the human body and absorbed by plants and
animals, becoming part of the food chain.
Once in the soil, DU can pollute the environment and create up to a
hundredfold increase in uranium levels in ground water, according to the
U.N. Environmental Program
The Defense Department said DU munitions are “war reserve munitions;
that is, used for combat and not fired for training purposes,” with the
exception that DU munitions may be fired at sea for weapon calibration
purposes.”
Another Navy spokeswoman described those firings at sea as “routine” and
says they occur regularly off both the East and West coasts.
“If the firing is with DU, it’s probably with what we call the Close in
Weapons System, and it is routine,” said Lt. Brauna Carl, a Navy
spokeswoman in Washington, D.C., and a former gunnery officer who has
worked with DU weapons.
When asked if the tests of DU rounds posed any health hazards, she
replied, “God, I hope not. All I know is I haven’t started glowing.”
But Milner says, “It just makes sense that if DU can contaminate land
and get into the food chain, then it would do the same thing in the
sea.”
Robert Alverson, president of the Fishing Vessel Owners Association in
Seattle, said he was “very troubled” to hear that the Navy was using
depleted uranium off the coast of Washington. “I don’t like what I’m
hearing,” he said.
The Navy memo obtained by Milner described a June 2001 operation by the
USS Fife, an Everett-based destroyer. The memo said the Fife would
conduct gunnery operations with depleted rounds in what was described as
areas W237C and W237F.
These areas are designated Navy Warning Areas and are about 25-100 miles
off the coast between Ocean Shores and Ozette, south of Neah Bay,
according to Milner.
“These are certainly prime fishing areas” for some salmon, flounder and
other bottomfish, Alverson said. “It is folly to be testing anything in
this area that might contaminate the natural food supply.”
“How would the Navy feel about eating fish caught there?” he asked.
Alverson said even the perception that fish might be contaminated could
scare consumers and have dire consequences.
“If any species ever turns up with radiation, it would be devastating to
the fishing industry,” he said.
Leonard Dietz, a research associate with the private, non-profit Uranium
Medical Research Centre in Canada and the United States, said that the
degree of environmental contamination the DU rounds will cause in sea
water depends on what kinds of targets were hit and how much DU was
fired.
“Corrosion of the DU by sea water would occur over a long time,” said
Dietz, who with Asaf Durakovic, director of the center, and research
associate Patricia Horan, published a landmark study on inhaled DU that
showed Gulf War veterans still had DU in their urine nine years after
the war.
“The end result is that the ocean becomes a dumping ground for the spent
DU penetrators and they add to the (natural) uranium content of sea
water,” he said.
The Ground Zero Center for Nonviolent Action is one of five peace and
environmental organizations already involved in a federal lawsuit
against the Navy for violations of the Endangered Species Act over the
Trident D-5 nuclear missile upgrade at the Bangor submarine base.
DEPLETED URANIUM HAZARDS
The Pentagon has sent mixed signals about the effects of depleted
uranium, saying there have been no known health problems associated with
the munition. At the same time, the military acknowledges the hazards in
an Army training manual, which requires that anyone who comes within 25
meters of any DU-contaminated equipment or terrain wear respiratory and
skin protection, and says that “contamination will make food and water
unsafe for consumption.”
Some researchers and several U.S. veterans organizations say they
suspect depleted uranium of playing a role in Gulf War Syndrome, the
still-unexplained malady that has plagued hundreds of thousands of Gulf
War veterans.
See also:
Ground Zero Center for Nonviolent Action
http://www.gzcenter.org
US forces have trained on Vieques for 60 years (Jan 11)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/2648111.stm The United States
Navy is to stop using the Puerto Rican island of Vieques for military
training exercises. Vieques’ 8,000 residents have long objected to the
use of their island as a bombing range, especially as depleted uranium
(DU) shells have been linked to rocketing cancer rates there.
Chronic Casualties (Jan 5)
http://www.kentucky.com/mld/heraldleader/news/local/4877717.htm Years
after serving in the Persian Gulf War, Dr. James Stutts of Berea still
fights crippling symptoms, the cause of which he can’t fully explain.
There are tens of thousands like him.
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