Once U.S. hands over land, study says, no further cleanup effort made
When the United States handed over authority for the Panama Canal to Panama in 1999, it returned 360,000 acres after removing only approximately 8,500 misfired shells from one of its training sites. It failed to carry out its pledge to hand over the land it had been using after minimizing its effect on people’s health and the environment. Eager to have the canal, the Panamanian government decided to discuss the environmental pollution at a later date and accepted its return. Once it had handed over its bases there, however, the U.S. made no good faith effort to respond to Panamanian demands regarding environmental cleanup. Even today, there are unexploded ordinance and illegally buried chemical weapons threatening the health of the Panamanian people. Green Korea United, an environmental group, released a report titled "Case Studies in Returned U.S. Bases Overseas" on Monday and demanded the Korean government refuse the return of land occupied by U.S. military facilities."As seen in the case of Panama, the moment the Korean government accepts the U.S.’s one-sided method of returning bases, the question of environmental cleanup is over, and there will be no substantial cleanup agreed to in later negotiations," it said in a separately distributed statement. Also on Monday, environmental minister Lee Chi-beom expressed strong disappointment with the U.S. military’s attempt to return land on its own terms. At a regularly scheduled briefing at the national government complex in Gwacheon, Minister Lee said, "(The U.S. military’s) one-sided base return plan is very regrettable in that the U.S. and Korea negotiated for over a year in an attempt to find points of agreement. It is inconsistent with agreements under [the Status of Forces Agreement] and I don’t think the U.S. will take such action."
