SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — The U.S. government has a new fight in Vieques, the Puerto Rican island that was used as a Navy bombing range for decades.
An extensive cleanup of the eastern portion of Vieques is years from being finished, but the government says it is ready to declare work completed on a nearly 400-acre site on the western side that was used to store and detonate expired munitions.
The former storage site was turned over to the U.S. Interior Department and declared a nature reserve. Under a proposal favored by the Navy, the cleanup of the area would be deemed complete even though about 200 acres has not been cleared of munitions debris, some potentially still live.
That has sparked outrage among activists and officials in Vieques and the main island of Puerto Rico who favor a complete removal of all debris. And it has brought back some of the angry rhetoric that helped force an end to Vieques’ use as a bombing range in 2003. Read the rest of the article here.