2 Navy toxic waste dumps; Hunters Point and Vieques, PR

Racism and the Navy, military occupation of Iraq slows cleanup of toxic waste near low income communities in Hunters Point and Vieques PR..

BREVE HISTORIA DE VIEQUES

por Wanda Bermúdez, 1998

El nombre Vieques se origina de la palabra indígena Bieque, isla pequeña o tierra pequeña. Lo poco que conocemos sobre los habitantes pre-colombinos de Vieques se deriva de hallazgos arqueológicos.

El más importante de estos hallazgos hasta esta fecha es el de el área de La Hueca donde se encontraron artefactos hechos en ametista, agate, turquesa y jadeita. Los más impresionantes tenían la forma del ave condor que se encuentra en Sur América.

Los indígenas que habitaban la isla en 1493 cuando Cristóbal Colón arribó a sus playas eran indios Taínos. Dos bravos hermanos caciques taínos en Vieques, Cacimar y Yaureibo, dirigieron dos revueltas separadas en contra de los españoles. Los dos fueron vencidos rápidamente y matados. Lo que quedó de la población indígena fue reducida a la esclavitud y enviada a Puerto Rico.

Una vez los indígenas fueron removidos de Vieques, hubo una sucesión de intentos fallidos de colonización por los ingleses, franceses y daneses. Cada uno de estos intentos fue confrontado por los españoles de Puerto Rico. En algunos mapas antiguos ingleses, Vieques se nombra Crab Island, Isla de Cangrejos. Entre un intento de colonización y otro, la isla fue utilizada por los piratas del área para re-suplir sus embarcaciones. Había abundancia de mariscos, pescado, aves y maderas.

Los españoles finalmente decidieron colonizar Vieques durante la primera mitad del siglo XIX. En 1843 el municipio fue establecido y la construcción del Fuerte Conde de Mirasol comenzó. El primer gobernador lo fué Don Teófilo Jaime María LeGuillou, un francés. En aquel tiempo Vieques era independiente de Puerto Rico. Durante la segunda mitad del siglo XIX, Vieques vió una gran prosperidad económica como resultado de la industria azucarera. Esclavos negros fueron traídos de las islas británicas vecinas. Habían varias centrales azucareras en operación. Los nombres de estas centrales fueron adoptados más tarde por los barrios: Playa Grande, Santa Maria, Puerto Real, Esperanza. Cuando los Estados Unidos de Norte America tomaron la isla en 1898, después de la Guerra Hispano-Americana, habían en Vieques cuatro grandes centrales. El azúcar hizo a varias familias ricas mientras la mayoría de la población trabajaba en los cultivos. Los trabajadores eran muy pobres y trabajaban bajo condiciones muy difíciles. Después de la huelga general de 1915, las condiciones de trabajo mejoraron grandemente.



Cuando la Marina llegó a Vieques en 1941, habían 10,362 habitantes en la isla y 8,000 toneladas de azúcar fueron producidas ese año. La Marina expropió dos terceras partes de las tierras, incluyendo la mayoría de las tierras utilizadas para la agricultura. La Central Playa Grande hizo su última producción en 1942.

Durante los primeros años después de la llegada de la Marina, hubo mucho empleo en la construcción de las bases militares. La gente llegaba a Vieques de Puerto Rico e Islas Vírgenes buscando trabajo. Cuando la construcción terminó los trabajadores se fueron y 3,000 de los 9,000 residentes de Vieques tuvieron que mudarse a Santa Cruz. El resto fue relocalizado a las áreas de Santa María y Monte Santo en Vieques. No había ni azúcar ni construcción para trabajar. El gobierno de Puerto Rico trató, entre 1945 y los '60, de re-establecer una economía agrícola en lo que quedaba de la sección civil de Vieques pero este plan no duró. Entre 1960 y 1970 la economía cambió de agricultura a manufactura, siendo la planta de la General Electric la más consistente fuente de empleo en Vieques. La planta fué establecida en 1969 y todavía está en operación.

La población de Vieques no ha cambiado mucho a travez de los años y todavía no pasa los 10,000 habitantes. El desempleo es rampante. Los jóvenes que salen a buscar una carrera universitaria pocas veces regresan pero se pueden ver visitando la isla usualmente en el verano. Al momento existe un desarrollo modesto de la industria turística. Hay más hoteles pequeños en Vieques que nunca antes. Incluso hay un super resort en construcción. Muchos residentes viven de la renta de propiedades a turistas. Esta nueva industria ha traído un nuevo flujo de residentes de los Estados Unidos continentales.

El desarrollo de cualquier tipo será limitado mientras la Marina mantenga control de dos terceras partes del área total de la isla. Alguna gente lo prefiera así porque piensan que la belleza natural de algunas playas en el área de las bases es preservada. Otra gente protesta porque el bombardeo de las playas más allá del alcanze de los turistas trae consequencias a la ecología y la salud de la población, la destrucción de puntos arqueológicos, y la restricción de accesso a los bellos recursos en las bases.

Bibliografía:

Vieques en la Historia de Puerto Rico por Dr. Juan Amedee Bonnet Benitez

Vieques:History of a Small Island por Elizabeth Langhorne

Vieques Antiguo y Moderno por J. Pastor Ruiz


above info from;

http://www.vieques-island.com/vi/historia.shtml

info on Hunters Point, from pre-colonialism to present;

prior to Spanish Settlers in 1776 - Amuctac and Tubsinte peoples, part of the Yemalu tribe of Muwekma Ohlone indians were established in the southern areas of San Francisco and were documented here by Mission Fathers. The Ohlone appeared as a distinct tribe on an early 20th Century Federal Register, but were left off subsequent editions and have filed claims for recognition and restoral of their original lands including all of The Hunters Point Shipyard. Read The Muwekma Ohlone Petition for return of their land.

1870 - Hunters Point , named after a local family, sees establishment of it's first commercial shipyard.

1906 - Hunters Point is briefly considered as a resettlement area for the Chinese after the Earthquake and Fire. The idea is proposed by racist local white business owners who want to remove the asian population from the heart of the city. The Chinese reject the plan and threaten to abandon SF for Oakland and close down trade if the city forces their community to the hilly outcropping on the city's south eastern side.

1939 - The seventy sixth congress purchases 47 acres for 3.9 million dollars, it was acquired by the Navy 11 days before Pearl Harbor. They eventually seized 500 more acres to build ships, to modify, maintain and repair all types of water craft (600 fighting and support ships) and held ordinance training exercises. At it's peak over 17,000 were employed at the Hunters Point shipyard. Many of the workers were newly transplanted African-Americans from the Southern states of Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana and Texas...Ironically, African Americans were not even allowed to serve on U.S. Navy ships in any capacity other than as mess workers.

1940's -From 1940 to 1950 the black population in the Bay Area increased from 16,500 to 147,000, mostly the result of labor demand in the shipyards. Restrictive covenants and policies elsewhere kept most blacks either in The Bayview or Fillmore neighborhoods. In July of 1945 The Atomic Bomb known as Little Boy was shipped from Hunters Point shipyard and eventually dropped on Japan, effectively ending WWII. The Navy Radiological Defense Laboratory decontamination center is established in 1946 for ships formerly involved in nuclear weapons testing in the Pacific. Radioactive paint is scraped from ships into the Bay by shipyard workers. The decontamination project ceased in 1969 after a significant budget cut.

1950's - During the Korean conflict the yard employs 11,000. Later in the decade, the amount of Shipyard work declines and results in massive unemployment in the surrounding area. Eventually absentee landlords and so-called Urban Renewal efforts force more Afro-Americans from The Fillmore out to the Bayview. As 101 and 280 Freeways were constructed, they created a bypass which both diverted the flow of traffic away from Bayview-Hunters Point's 3rd St corridor and cut it off from the rest of the city.

1960's- As issues related to unemployment and racial tensions swept the Bay Area. The San Francisco Redevelopment Agency declared parts of the Fillmore blighted and relocated over 461 businesses and over 4,000 black families out of the city. In 1966, white Police Officers shoot an unarmed young man in the back, killing him and setting in motion a riot. Mayor Shelley orders a curfew which causes protests as the riots last for several days and spread to the Fillmore district. Gov. Brown orders the National Guard ( 2000 strong) into Hunter's Point with shoot to kill orders . For 6 days gunfire and arson plague the community, and the underlying racial and social problems continued to worsen throughout the remainder of the decade.

1970's - As the black and anti war radical movement was subdued through arrests and co-opted by Cointel Pro operatives, The Black Panthers splintered. One group active in HP and around the Bay under Gov't suspicion was the Black Liberation Army. By the summer of 1970 a police sergeant was killed at his desk when two black men fire repeated blasts into the Ingleside police station; the BLA was suspected. In 1971 bombings and other violent acts of retribution attributed to the BLA against the Police continued.



1974 - Aerial photographs show that the Navy filled a bay inlet with shipyard wastes from 1958 until 1974 to form the landfill area. The Navy dumped an estimated 1 million cubic yards of debris in the inlet, including twenty-six tons of paint scrapings. The shipyard eventually closed on June 30 1974. The community has experienced approx. 30% unemployment since the base was placed in industrial reserve in 1974. As the social fabric of the neighborhood begins to deteriorate further, drugs begin to seep deeper into the community.
1976 - 1986 - The Shipyard site is leased to Triple-A Machine Shop, Inc who sublease a number of buildings to small businesses and artists. It is said that during the Triple-A years there was heinous illegal disposal of waste products by the company. In 1978 the NAACP & local community advocates tried to bring attention to the plight of residents and ongoing problems with police brutality. The San Francisco Police Officers Association had the audacity to literally sue residents as well as the NAACP for defamation. The ongoing legal battle between the SFPOA and Bayview-Hunters Point Community Defenders continued until 1982, when the suit was dismissed.

1987 - PCBs, trichloroethylene and other solvents, pesticides, petroleum hydrocarbons and metals including lead are confirmed at a number of shipyard locations. The EPA places Hunters Point Shipyard on the National Priorities List in 1989.

1988/89 - Remove approx. 1,500 drums of hazardous materials from the site. The Hunter’s Point Annex of the Naval Shipyard has been an Environmental Protection Agency “SuperFund” site since 1989, meaning it is one of the “worst of the worst” toxic sites in the country.

1990 - Approx. 226,000 sq. ft. of asbestos contaminated materials are removed.

1994 - A Lawsuit against the Navy is filed for 19,000 violations of the Clean Water Act. The violations are based on the Navy's own self-monitoring reports to the EPA. The lead alone contained in the Bay is reported at over 631 times higher than the “trigger level” — that is, the danger point.


1999- As San Francisco became increasingly gentrified during the dot com boom, Blacks became further marginalized . Down to approx 7% of the cities population, African Americans were rapidly being replaced by Asians, Whites and Hispanics who began buying up the remaining affordable housing stock in the Bayview area. The black business community was mostly ignored throughout the 70's, 80's and 90's by the successive mayoral administrations of George Moscone, Dianne Feinstein, Art Agnos, and Frank Jordan. Hope that Willie Brown would come to the rescue of the city's black community soon faded after his election in 1995.

+ A 1999 study conducted by the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), revealed that African Americans in San Francisco received 254 percent more rejections than whites when they asked for mortgage loans.

+ African American contractor's have complained of a stacked deck in minority bid processes, while the Feds investigated corruption and shredding of documents in the Housing Authority. Despite promises to the local black community, outside and "fronting" firms continue to be awarded contracts to do the work in the area and only 5 percent of the neighborhood's businesses employ people who live in the community. The imminent redevelopment of San Francisco's Bayview Hunters Point and Third Street, which could be considered the last strong bastion of the city's black community has been handled by non-neighborhood firms. Outside companies such as Rite-Aid and Florida based Lennar are awarded lucrative tax payer funded development contracts.


2000 and on - An underground hazardous waste landfill fire burns at the shipyard, but the community is not notified until complaints by sick residents force a dialogue. Many complained about a mysterious oddly colored smoke. Football fans at Candlestick/ 3-Com Park reported smelling the acrid fumes. The Navy eventually incurred a $25,000 fine from the EPA for failing to notify anyone that an underground fire was raging for weeks in the toxic Hunters Point landfill.
+A Community meeting organized by Supervisor Tom Ammiano brings the Navy, the EPA, state regulatory agencies, the City’s Redevelopment Agency, Health Department, Fire Department and environmental experts together to discuss ongoing problems in the neighborhood.

+ In Bayview Hunters Point, 91% of the population are people of color, and unemployment is 250% higher than the rest of the City. 30% of the people earn less than $15,000 per year versus 19% Citywide. There are four times as many hazardous waste sites in Bayview Hunters Point than any other part of the City.

+Hunters Point area citizens rate of hospitalization is 4 times the state average. Four times the state average for having asthma, congestive heart failure, diabetes, emphysema and hypertension. African Americans in Bayview many of whom have lived there for decades, have far higher lung cancer mortality rates than average. The disease killed 1,300 black men and 650 black women between 1987 and 1995.

+ Breast cancer rates among women under age 40 in the area are twice the normal level and the highest in the country.


+Mirant Energy plans to expand their Hunters Point Power Plant which would add 110 tons of dangerous air emissions each year for the next 40 years. The community already has two existing power plants and suffers from high levels of pollution from nearby industries, diesel trucks, etc. Although Bayview Hunters Point constitutes only 4% of the City's population, it receives 910 million gallons of sewage overflow every rainy season and 80% of the City's daily sanitary waste.

+ Meanwhile the community is rocked by a series of "gang related" shootings plaguing the area. Over 100 are reported in a two year period. Many deaths of young people result. A Gang Task Force patrols and intimidates people of all ages throughout the area as low employment has lead to the drug trade replacing traditional working class values.