Ka Wai Ola - Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Volume 21, Number 8, 1 August 2004 — Community groups decry Stryker as 'disaster for the people and environment of Hawaiʻiʻ [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Community groups decry Stryker as 'disaster for the people and environment of Hawaiʻiʻ

The following article was presented to Hawai'i's congressional delegation on July 6, 2004, as part of a Community Impact Statement on the Stryker Brigade. DMZ Hawai'i/Aloha 'Āina thanks Trustee Cataluna for offering eolumn space to present it here. The Stryker Brigade Environmental Impact Statement is a horror story. It is a 2,000 page depiction of the realities that will befall us if the Stryker Brigade Combat Team were to be stationed here in our home: precious water will be contaminated; unexploded ordnance will be left in the ground; historic sites will be destroyed; our people will be exposed to toxic chemicals and other health hazards, and little or nothing will be done to mitigate these circumstances. The EIS admits of all these things, yet members of the congressional delegation continue to insist on this program. If for this reason alone, the voices represented here in this Community Impact Statement reject the proposed military expansion for a Stryker Brigade in Hawai'i.

However, there are many other issues whieh the Army has not, or will not consider in this EIS. This includes the impact of toxins and mutagens on civilian populations, wholesale omissions of specific deadly compounds from their analysis, alternative proposals for lessened or no impact on our eommunities, or even the important question of cleaning up and returning existing military-occupied lands. The military uses, with practically zero compensation or rent, 245,000 acres of prime land in our fragile home, including more than 1/4 of the island of O'ahu. The EIS does not tackle these important points, and the concerns of the people have been left behind, rendering it an incomplete document. This Community Impact Statement seeks to lift up the voices of the communities most affected by the expansion to highlight concerns and traditional knowledge that were ignored by the Army. The proposed Stryker Brigade expansion would not occur in isolation. The people of Hawai'i and the 'āina have endured over a 100 years

of military impacts. The Army Stryker Brigade EIS fails to assess their proposed action in light of the cumulative impacts of all these military activities and bases in Hawai'i. The wrong questions have been asked, and a narrow scope has used, in the preparation of this Environmental Impact Statement. In assembling this Community Impact Statement, we are building on the testimony of the people, who called for a broader and more profound analysis and response on how the Stryker Brigade will affect us and our families, both alone and also in conjunction with the century-long amassing of American military forces in Hawai'i nei, with the cumulative impact of all of the toxins, carcinogens, and mutagens we have been exposed to; the social and eeonomie effects of so mueh of our land being consumed by militarism, as well as the increase in violence that occurs when families are saturated in the eamal violence of war-making. After reviewing the information contained in the Army's Stryker EIS and listening to the concerns of

our community, we conclude that the Stryker Brigade would be a disaster for the people and the environment of Hawai'i. It would expose communities to unacceptable risks and hazards. Therefore we reject the Army's Stryker Brigade and vow to protest this dangerous project. We eall on General Campbell, the Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld and Army officials at the Pentagon to eaneel the Stryker Brigade. Furthermore, we eall on Hawai'i's congressional delegation to listen to the people, and end their bankrolling of the controversial Stryker Brigade. We demand no military expansion, and for the elean up, restoration, and return of the 'āina. Regarding the hundreds of millions of dollars dedicated to military expansion in Hawai'i, we eall for those funds to be redirected to environmental eleanup and eommunity based eeonomie altematives based on human needs. Finally, the military must pay just eompensation for its use and damage of Hawaiian lands. ■

Donald B. Cataluna Trustee, Kaua'i and Ni'ihau