Report: Army making toxic mess in war zones

Report: Army making toxic mess in war zones

By Kelly Kennedy - Staff writer
Posted : Friday Oct 3, 2008 10:47:54 EDT

The U.S. Army is creating a toxic mess in Afghanistan and Iraq, according to a new report that details cases of hazardous waste dumped in ditches, soldiers setting up tents on top of fuel spills and service members exposed to cyanide gas during overseas deployments.

The report by the Rand Corp. think tank also says the Defense Department has no overarching policy to ensure environmental mishaps in Iraq and Afghanistan don’t harm troops’ health, create political disputes and avoid costly clean-up efforts when it’s time to leave those countries.

“If not properly addressed in planning or operations, environmental considerations can make it more difficult for the Army to sustain the mission — yet environmental considerations are not well incorporated into Army planning or operations in any phase of an operation,” states the report, released in late September by the Rand Arroyo Center, a federally funded research and development center that supports the Army.

The report, “Green Warriors: Army Environmental Considerations for Contingency Operations from Planning through Post-Conflict, states:

• A contractor hired by the Defense Department dumped waste oil in a landfill in Iraq and then sold the barrels.

• U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan buried several drums containing unidentified liquids, which later turned out to be hazardous, posing a risk of soil and groundwater contamination.

• In Iraq, an airfield sits over an old airfield with leaking fuel tanks. “Major health issues arise whenever it is necessary to dig.”

• Commanders in Iraq have set up hazardous-waste disposal areas close to camp perimeters, creating a force-protection issue since they were potential targets for hand grenades and IEDs.

• High-grade diesel fuel was spilled in a lake in Iraq that was used for drinking water at a base. The lake is no longer used as a source of drinking water.

• U.S. forces in Iraq improperly dumped insecticides, batteries, oil products and other hazardous material. Soldiers joked that fuel spills were “replenishing the oil wells.”

• Troops in Iraq fell ill after rolling leaking drums of industrial-strength pesticides out of a building.

“The Army needs to improve its policy and guidance for environmental considerations in contingency operations,” the report states. “It should work with [the Defense Department] to develop guidance that applies irrespective of location. ... It does no good to win the war only to forfeit the peace.”Addison Davis IV, deputy assistant secretary of the Army for environment, safety and occupational health, responded to the report in a June 11 memo by saying the findings show that “environmental issues can affect the Army on many levels, from tactical considerations of soldier health and base-camp placement to its ability to achieve strategic national objectives for a stable and sustainable society that would allow Army forces to redeploy.”

Addison noted that the report found environmental issues “can be particularly important for success during stability operations in the developing world, where the local populace often have critical needs for basic environmental resources such as clean water and sanitation.”

An Army environmental alert issued in May showed there are plans to address the problems. It said Gen. Daviud Petraeus, the incoming chief of U.S. Central Command, planned to approve an environmental policy for Iraq, and that funds were needed for incinerators, waste disposal and environmental base closures.

As U.S. forces leave Iraq, they will have to clean up their mess. Bruce Travis of the U.S. Army Engineer School said in the alert that the Army didn’t even start environmental measures until five years into the war.

“We’ve had a lot of problems with waste lagoons, congressional inquiries, medical waste in landfills, insurgent chemicals and co-mingled wastes,” Travis said in the alert. Insurgent chemicals are used for explosive devices.

The U.S. Army Engineer School said in May that an estimated 11 million pounds of hazardous waste exist in Iraq.

In an interview with Military Times, Army Lt. Col. Garth Anderson, commander of the 733rd Facility Engineer Detachment out of Kansas City, Mo., agreed that environmental hazards undermine the mission.

Under Saddam Hussein, Iraq had no environmental policies or laws, and that continued after the U.S. military landed in 2003. In countries with environmental laws, such as Germany, troops must clean up every gas spill and replace any trees ripped out during training exercises. In Iraq, there are no such mandates, and troops lacked the training to expect or conform to high environmental standards in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“I think some of the fieldcraft has been lost over the years,” Anderson said, referring to the decades in which Americans mostly conducted peace missions. “The Army generates huge amounts of waste; I think there’s a need for increased training.”

Anderson spent nine months in Afghanistan as part of a seven-person facility engineer team in 2002. In Kandahar, after the fighting was over, they found a lot of bombed-out structures, vehicles, and destroyed Taliban equipment. U.S. troops set up a small burn pit in the middle of a big debris pile, he said.

During initial operations, burn pits are often a good option because they’re simple, Anderson said, but added that they still need to be safe.

“Everyone was doing the best they could,” Anderson said. “But it was dangerous. It was small. Aerosol cans could cook off. One truck actually got too close and burned up.”

Anderson wrote about the situation in Engineer magazine, saying the burn pit at Kandahar was uncontrolled, and that people tossed in aerosol cans, hazardous waste, petroleum and oil — which could seep into the ground water supply — and medical waste. Smoke hovered over areas where troops slept and worked.

Pretty quickly, they realized they needed a different plan — but it had to be simple enough that everyone would follow the rules.

Rather than tossing waste oil and batteries in the pit, as they had been done before, they made it easy to recycle such materials. Rather than tossing weaponry and ordnance into the flames and watching it explode, they set out an amnesty box. And rather than exposing the troops to medical waste — bloody bandages or used needles — they eventually obtained a small incinerator that would help eliminate infection, Anderson said.

They also moved the pit so the smoke blew away from the troops.

“I think they were happy to have something that was easier to use,” he said.

His team was able to stop other bad practices, such as sprinkling gasoline to keep the dust down, as was also done during Desert Storm. The fuel eventually can seep down into the water supply.Anderson said he would like to see the military better able to sustain itself by using waste oil burners or solid waste to generate heat.

“It’s a pretty significant problem,” he said. “I think most soldiers are more concerned about the mission … and may not be as concerned about the environment. But it’s not just [a] … tree-hugger thing.”

For example, if troops can dispose of their waste inside the wire in an environmentally friendly way, they may not have to risk lives going outside the wire to dispose of it, he said. And, according to the Rand report, stored hazardous waste is a potentially deadly weapon for insurgents to use on U.S. troops.

Michael Wolford, of the U.S. Army Engineer Schoolprepared a briefing about environmental conditions in Iraq. After talking to commanders in theater, he compiled a list of the excuses he heard for not properly handling waste management and disposal while deployed:

• “If it was important enough for us to do, we would have been told about it before we got here” — battalion commander.

• “It’s not our job.” — battalion commander.

• “We’re in the desert. What does it matter?” — Brigade combat Team commander

• “We’re here to fight a war, not pick up trash.” — Battalion Combat Team Commander.

• “We’re just passing through and do not have time.” — battalion combat team commander.

In his briefing, Wolford showed a fuel point in Uzbekistan with a car-sized puddle of fuel, contractors in Iraq dumping human waste tanks into a ditch, and leaking oil drums left behind in Iraq.

He determined that line units need more training — but so do engineers in the absence of a “consistent or overarching policy.”

He recommended that the office of the secretary of defense create and implement “consistent operations environmental and sustainability policies.”The Rand report cited several examples of things the troops did well, too, such as creating environmentally sound ways to dispose of waste or, in one case, monitoring birds to see how operations affected wildlife.

In fact, the report found, taking good care of the environment raised morale, and several people came forward to complain when things weren’t handled properly.

But service members must be trained if the problems are to stop, the report states.

“Although engineers play a prominent role in establishing, running and closing base camps, many are not trained in construction engineering and other key skills because of the Army’s focus on developing combat engineers,” it states.

“The Army has recently recognized the perennial problems it has with base camps,” the report said, and has decided to formally establish a lead-agency proponent for base camps.

The hope is that a proponent will establish standard operating procedures “for designing, building and operating base camps in future operations.”

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