Military Toxics Project
Networking for Environmental Justice
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Military Toxics Project |
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MTP History and Achievements 2004 is the 15th anniversary of the Military Toxics Project! Please help ensure fifteen more years of support for grassroots organizations confronting military toxics by making a contribution today. Click here to donate online. History The Military Toxics Project was founded in 1989 by the National Toxics Campaign to support the development, visibility, skills, and political power of grassroots organizations confronting military environmental contamination and human health damage. MTP quickly grew into a broad network including local organizations, veterans' groups, and public health activists, working not for grassroots groups but with them in solidarity. In 1991, MTP released the first-ever compilation of the full extent of the military's threat to public health and the environment, "The U.S. Military's Toxic Legacy." In 1993, MTP was spun off as an independent project when the National Toxics Campaign ceased operations. The Tides Foundation/Tides Center served as MTP's fiscal sponsor until 1998, when we were approved as a tax exempt 501(c)(3) organization by the federal Internal Revenue Service. In 1995, a Strategic Planning Workshop attended by grassroots leaders from a wide range of grassroots organizations developed a vision, structure, and five year goals for the newly independent network. From its inception in 1989 through 2000, MTP supported several issue-based networks of local organizations on topics including chemical weapons, rocket toxics, depleted uranium, base closures, conventional munitions, and contaminated bases. Members of these networks determined and implemented collective goals, strategies, and tactics to win positive changes. In 2001, MTP's Grassroots Board of Directors adopted a new structure to build greater unity and power among grassroots organizations challenging military toxics. MTP combined its issue-based networks into one national campaign dedicated to making the military accountable for the damage it causes to human health and the environment. The Healthy Communities Campaign coordinates grassroots activity to improve community access to military environmental information, expand enforcement of environmental laws against military facilities, end military exemptions from public health and environmental laws, and document the human cost of military contamination. MTP still supports issue-specific collaborations through its Working Group program. Throughout its history, MTP has networked and nurtured local organizations through the Community Empowerment Program (which provides organizing advice and training, staff site visits, travel scholarships, community to community exchanges, and other support), the Computer Technology Program, in-person workshops, teleconferences, email discussion lists, community exchanges, and other means. Accomplishments The Military Toxics Project is a network of grassroots organizations. MTP's power to achieve positive changes comes from our members. The network's accomplishments are really their accomplishments, achieved through collective grassroots action. In March 1991, MTP released a groundbreaking 126-page report, "The U.S. Military’s Toxic Legacy: America’s Worst Environmental Enemy." The report was the first overview of military environmental contamination, including information from a variety of sources. MTP marshaled grassroots forces to win passage of the Federal Facility Compliance Act of 1992. The act made military bases and other federal facilities fully accountable to federal and state hazardous waste laws (RCRA) for the first time. MTP mobilized grassroots pressure to force Congress to withdraw a contractor indemnification clause from the Defense Authorization Act of 1992. In February 1992, MTP released the study "Operation Ozone Shield: The Pentagon’s War on the Stratosphere", which identified the military and its contractors as the largest emitters of ozone-destroying CFCs. MTP’s report, coupled with a NASA report about depletion of the ozone layer, pressured the first Bush Administration and DOD to accelerate the phase out of ozone-destroying chemicals. In March 1993, MTP kicked off its Depleted Uranium Campaign by co-releasing a report written by Rural Alliance for Military Accountability (RAMA). The report, "Uranium Battlefields at Home and Abroad" received national attention and spurred Congressional hearings. Congress subsequently authorized funds to study the health effects of Persian Gulf veterans and their exposure to depleted uranium and authorized the Veterans Administration to provide Gulf War veterans with priority care at its hospitals. In April 1993, MTP and other organizations successfully pressured the Clinton Administration to sign an Executive Order mandating that federal facilities comply with the Emergency Planning and Community Right to Know law, which requires industrial facilities to report pollution. In April 1994, MTP collaborated with the Environmental and Economic Justice Project to organize a Strategic Planning workshop to develop a vision and structure for MTP that is democratic, accountable and diverse. Representatives from 27 grassroots groups met to discuss their five year visions for local work and what role MTP could play to help them reach those visions. These discussions gave birth to MTP’s Five Year Goals. Participants at the meeting also discussed characteristics of effective, democratic structures, which led to the creation of MTP’s Bylaws, Board structure, and Advisory Committees. In May 1995, after two years of meetings and negotiations with the EPA, MTP won a consent decree ordering the EPA to comply with the Federal Facilities Compliance Act of 1992 and write a rule determining when munitions are considered hazardous waste. In the Summer of 1995, while the Base Realignment and Closure Commission submitted its recommendation of base closings, MTP was one of a few national organizations that publicized the environmental impacts of closing military bases. In January 1996 (the fifth anniversary of the Gulf War), MTP made public a previously-unreleased Army report that acknowledged that depleted uranium, which is both toxic and radioactive, was standard equipment in the U.S. Army. MTP also released a critique of the report, "Radioactive Battlefields of the 1990s: The U.S. Army’s Use of Depleted Uranium Weapons and Its Consequences for Human Health and the Environment." MTP’s Web Site was first available for public Internet viewing in 1997. The site receives up to 9,000 visitors weekly. In 1998, MTP released three editions of the DU Case Narrative. The report, which is based on government documents regarding DU exposure to U.S. soldiers in the Gulf War, documented hundreds of thousands of exposures that the government never acknowledged. In the summer of 1998, MTP set up an Internet listserve to communicate with international groups working on military toxics issues. The DU listserve has more than 150 people participating from over two dozen different countries. After more than five years of pushing the DOD and informing the public about the dangers of depleted uranium, the DOD finally admitted in a 1998 annual report to Congress that thousands of soldiers were unknowingly exposed to DU while serving in the Persian Gulf. In 1999, MTP designed and facilitated a workshop on depleted uranium at the Hague Appeal for Peace Conference in the Netherlands. Representatives from more than a dozen countries participated in the workshop. MTP’s national DU organizer worked for months with producers of the CBS 60 Minutes show on a segment that aired on December 26, 1999. Since 1997, MTP has sent community activists to visit their peers around the country who are in need of expertise in different areas. In an effort to promote women and people of color, the Community Exchange Program was established. Activists from one community can request assistance and expertise from another state. From 1998 – 2000, MTP gave away a dozen computers, training and software to disadvantaged community organizations across the U.S. through our Computer Technology Program. In June 2001, MTP kicked off its national Healthy Communities Campaign with a week of grassroots actions that included the release of the new report "Defend Our Health: A People's Report to Congress" which analyzed military exemptions from public health and environmental laws and their impacts on communities. In June 2002, MTP coordinated a second week of grassroots actions and released a comprehensive fifty-four page report on military munitions and ranges, called "Communities in the Line of Fire: The Environmental, Cultural, and Human Health Impacts of Military Munitions and Firing Ranges." Also in 2002, MTP helped expose the human health damage caused by military toxics by compiling and distributing "The Human Cost of Military Toxics", a collection including several hundred pages of studies, articles, and interviews. In 2002, 2003, and 2004, MTP participated in a broad coalition of national and local organizations that defeated Pentagon proposals for sweeping new exemptions from federal hazardous waste, toxic cleanup, and clean air laws. In 2003, MTP coordinated the activities of the coalition. In February 2003, MTP brought together eighteen community leaders working to document the human cost of military contamination for a three-day environmental health workshop to share information and plan collaborative work. In June 2003, MTP released a new sixteen-page depleted uranium fact sheet, summarizing human health and environmental impacts at each stage of the DU life cycle. In 2003, MTP helped found the International Coalition to Ban Uranium Weapons (ICBUW), a collection of grassroots organizations and experts from several countries dedicated to ending the military use of uranium and other radioactive materials in weaponry. In 2004, MTP worked with the Student Environmental Action Coalition (SEAC) to develop a new online interactive map site to help community and student/youth organizations confronting military toxics find and support each other. |
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Military Toxics Project -
mtp@miltoxproj.org Full contact information is
available here. |
