FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Tuesday, August 28, 2001CONTACT: Christopher Paine, NRDC, 804-244-5013/245-5099, cpaine@earthlink.net
(For copies of the court filing, please contact Liz Heyd at 202-289-2424, eheyd@nrdc.org )
Public Interest Groups File Suit Against Missile Defense Testing in Alaska
Petition Court to Order Full Analysis of Environmental Impacts
WASHINGTON, D.C., (August 28, 2001) - On behalf of itself and seven co-plaintiff organizations, the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), a major national environmental organization, today filed suit in the Federal Court for the District of Columbia to compel the Defense Department to prepare environmental impact statements on its missile defense activities in Alaska and elsewhere before proceeding with the construction of new test and "emergency deployment" facilities.
Joining NRDC as plaintiffs in the suit are Physicians for Social Responsibility, Greenpeace USA, Alaska Public Interest Research Group, Alaska Action Center, Alaska Community Action on Toxics, Kodiak Rocket Launch Information Group, and No Nukes North: Alaskan and Circumpolar Coalition Against Missile Defense. (Contact information for these organizations is listed on the front of the complaint. Copies of the complaint are available from NRDC.)
"By its own admission, the Administration has radically revised the nation's Ballistic Missile Defense (BMD) program, including expanding missile defense testing activities into ecologically sensitive areas in Alaska. The law requires that these changes undergo environmental analysis and review in a public process aimed at identifying the least harmful alternatives for implementing the proposed program," noted NRDC senior attorney David Adelman.
According to the complaint filed today, there are myriad environmental impacts associated with the activities of the new BMD program. These include major impacts from construction of new facilities and testing programs at sites in Alaska, Colorado, Hawaii, the Marshall Islands, California, and other possible locations; disruption of unique and pristine ecosystems from activities such as laying communications cables and test launches, which in some cases, like the Kodiak Launch Facility, are located in a relatively untouched environment that harbors endangered or threatened species; significant deposition of space debris from numerous planned interception tests in low earth orbit, where it can collide with and cripple existing and future satellites; electromagnetic radiation hazards from the operation of powerful missile tracking radars; extensive storage and use of solvents and other explosive chemical compounds, and deposition in the atmosphere of large quantities of ozone-depleting chemicals from the numerous rocket launches required to test and deploy elements of the proposed system.
"The Pentagon is attempting to rely on a defunct and deficient Environmental Impact Statement - prepared under the previous Administration to support deployment of a ground-based system that neither Congress nor the President ever approved - to justify initiating work on a very different proposal for expanded, integrated flight testing of all types of ballistic missiles defenses," observed NRDC Senior Analyst Christopher Paine.
Under the new Bush plan, the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization (BMDO) is proposing the creation of a vast "Missile Defense System (MDS) Test Bed" ranging from Alaska to the Marshall Islands and Hawaii to California, wherein the Pentagon intends to conduct integrated tests of a multi-layered defense system consisting of ground- and sea-based interceptor missiles, air-borne lasers, ground and sea-based radars, and space-based heat sensing satellites.
"Junking the previous deployment plan, which was wildly premature from a technological standpoint, was a wise move, " Paine said, "but the Bush Administration is now seeking to preserve just enough of the old plan - five out of a hundred silos for a potential 'emergency capability' at Fort Greely, Alaska - to assert under the National Environmental Policy Act that it is implementing a 'downscoped' version of the previous Clinton plan."
"We trust the Court won't fall for this subterfuge," said attorney David Adelman. " It's clear that what the Bush Administration is actually doing is nothing like the old Clinton deployment plan. The Clinton era Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) says nothing about interceptor flight tests from sites in Alaska. In fact, it says there wouldn't be any. It's just not plausible to use this EIS to justify the startup of work on a completely different project that is geared to development and testing."
NRDC Senior Analyst Christopher Paine notes that even the limited deployment now proposed by BMDO is not the one analyzed in the EIS. For example, the radar to be used in this new 'deployment' is not the proposed $1 billion dollar X-band radar on Shemya Island in the Aleutians, a critical long-lead item that President Clinton ultimately deferred. "It's Cobra Dane," Paine noted, "a 30 year old radar that can't even see Hawaii, which this so-called emergency deployment is supposed to defend. Under the new plan, the X-band radar won't be in place until 2006 at the earliest, and it will be in a new location, perhaps Hawaii, perhaps aboard ship."
"It's obvious to everyone," Paine continued, "that the Bush plan is oriented in the near term toward development and testing - not deployment - and they're pursuing a multi-layered defense system that bears little resemblance to the prior Clinton deployment plan."
"The five 'test-bed' interceptors at Ft. Greely that supposedly could be declared operational don't even rise to the level of what some are calling a 'scarecrow defense'," Paine observed. "They're nothing more than an electoral fig leaf for 2004. We see no reason why the environmental laws of this country should be trampled on simply for the electoral convenience of the President."
"Moreover, " Paine noted, "dropping the pretense of calling Ft. Greely a "downscoped deployment" would have the added benefit of finessing the immediate problem that construction at the site will violate the ABM Treaty." Under the 1972 ABM Treaty, each party is entitled to designate new anti-ballistic missile test areas, and to seek the informal agreement of the other party before locating ABM components there.
The Natural Resources Defense Council is a national, non-profit organization of scientists, lawyers and environmental specialists dedicated to protecting public health and the environment, and eliminating nuclear weapons. Founded in 1970, NRDC has more than 500,000 members nationwide, served from offices in New York, Washington, Los Angeles and San Francisco. More information is available through NRDC's Web site at www.nrdc.org.
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