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20 January 2003
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Navy's departure in Vieques is a bittersweet ending VIEQUES, Puerto Rico -- The muffled roar of Navy jets and the distant booms of off-shore shelling rolling over this island town last week will become a memory once the Navy ends what is likely its last round of training on a disputed bombing range here. But for residents who have had to share the island since the Navy expropriated roughly three-quarters of its 33,000 acres in the early 1940s, the struggle won't end until they gain control over former Navy lands and win a federal commitment to clean up the contamination from 60 years of bombardment. The announcement earlier this month that the Navy had found alternatives to its Vieques training -- at bases in the southeastern United States and with computerized training at sea -- was bittersweet for many here. It preceded the start of a 29-day round of bombing exercises that began Monday, and it was under terms that left nearly half the island -- some 16,000 acres -- in the hands of federal agencies. "We have to continue struggling for the cleanup and return of the lands. Vieques has the right to sustainable development," Vieques Mayor Damaso Serrano said. The decision to stop the war games comes after years of protest sparked by the April 1999 death of David Sanes Rodriguez, a local resident and civilian security guard killed during a botched bombing run. The bombing range remained closed for nearly a year, as protesters erected camps on its beaches and shrapnel-scarred hills. It was finally cleared in a May 2000 federal raid after former President Bill Clinton and former Gov. Pedro Rossello reached an accord that first established a May 1, 2003, Navy exit date and restricted Navy practice to the use of "dummy" bombs or inert ordnance in its Vieques training. Last week, protesters continued demonstrating even after the Navy said it would end training because, they said, of years of broken Navy promises. "If the Navy says they will leave in 2003, it won't be until at least 2004," said Angel Luis Diaz, a 43-year-old construction worker. "It will take a long time after they are gone for me to believe it." Resentment runs along both sides of the barb-wired fence that cuts off the eastern third of this island -- from the north coast to the south coast -- dividing military from civilian land. "I acknowledge the situation with regard to Vieques with extreme disappointment, our sailors and Marines deserve better," said Marines Corps Commandant Gen. James Jones in a Dec. 31 memo to Navy Secretary Gordon England. "Some in Puerto Rico (particularly in Vieques) have demonstrated an appalling hostility towards sailors, Marines and their requirement for pre-deployment training; this at a particularly dangerous time in our nation's history." Now that the Navy has been forced to abandon its bombing range here, officials say that it could mean closure of Naval Station Roosevelt Roads in Ceiba, on Puerto Rico's east coast. Adm. Robert Natter, commander of the Atlantic Fleet, has said that without its adjacent Vieques training ground, the base is a "drain" on taxpayer dollars. The Navy says the base puts more than $300 million a year into the island economy, said base spokesman Oscar Seara. The base hosts 2,394 military personnel and 4,634 of their dependents and provides about 2,370 civilian jobs. "We will have to change the way we do business without Vieques, but no decisions on how operations will change have been made," Seara said. A final decision on the base won't be made until 2005. "The fundamental problem here is that the Navy never has had the intention of helping the people of Vieques," said Radames Tirado, 69, a former mayor, who said the Navy blocked his requests for everything from help in winning federal grants to getting old Navy 55-gallon drums to use as garbage cans in town. "They have tried to strangle the economy of Vieques so that the people of Vieques would have to leave," he added. After Sanes Rodriguez's death, the Navy attempted to improve relations through a $40 million spending plan, but few residents were willing to listen. "After David's death, they came right away offering people work and giving away thousands of dollars," said Osvaldo Gonzalez, 65, owner of Vieques Air Link, one of the island's largest employers with 80 workers. "It was too late because they lied so much, and they made such fools of the people of Vieques for so many years , that people no longer believed them. And I include myself. I no longer believe the Navy," added Gonzalez, who once sat on a Navy-sponsored economic development board in the 1980s. While the protests continue, they are not as animated or as large as in the past; one indication that the movement is looking beyond its demand for a halt to bombing to a cleanup and return of former Navy lands. Plans call for most of the land to become a wildlife preserve operated by the Department of Interior, a designation that requires a lower level of cleanup than if it were developed. The Environmental Protection Agency has yet to comment on Navy cleanup plans for its Camp Garcia, which includes the 900-acre bombing range -- deemed so polluted that authorities are proposing prohibiting access. "It's what the EPA doesn't know that worries us," said Stacie Notine, 50, a single mother whose concerns over contamination has turned her into a Navy gadfly. Vieques residents have long suspected that Navy bombing could be harming the environment and their health. The cancer rate in Vieques is about 26 percent higher than that of the main island of Puerto Rico, according to the Puerto Rico Health Department, which began an epidemiological study last year. "When someone dies in Vieques, no one asks anymore from what," said Jose Velez, a 69-year-old Korean War veteran who took part in a protest rally the night the Navy's last round of training began. "We all know it's cancer."
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