Earth Matters Wars, Past and Present, Leave Scars on the Earth

Earth Matters

Wars, Past and Present, Leave Scars on the Earth

Aired May 30, 1999 - 1:30 p.m.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

NATALIE PAWELSKI, HOST: Images of hell on earth: Kuwait's oil wells on fire, and lakes of oil on land and sea. Eight years after the Gulf War ended, find out howKuwait's land, water and wildlife are doing today. And behind the scenes on board one of NATO's newest ships. Life at sea has always meant keeping things "shipshape." But today, that has a whole new meaning.

War and the environment on this special edition of EARTH MATTERS.

Hello and welcome to a special edition of EARTH MATTERS.
I'm Natalie Pawelski.

Throughout history wars have been fought over land: who controls it and who has to give it up. This week we look at what fighting does to the land, to the water, the wildlife, and the rest of the human habitat. We start in earth's current hot spot, Kosovo.

(voice-over): NATO forces have targeted oil refineries, chemical plants, and electric infrastructure believed to be heavily laced with toxic PCBs. That's got green groups and neighboring countries worried.

BRENT BLACKWELDER, FRIENDS OF THE EARTH: One of the major concerns is that the Danube River flows through Kosovo, Yugoslavia, enters the Black Sea; 10 million people drink that water. What is going to happen as the discharges from factories occur as a result of bombings and other kinds of releases?

PAWELSKI: Even though bombing campaigns are by definition destructive and even though some missiles are falling in the wrong place, NATO leaders say they are trying to pick targets carefully.

ALBERT GORE, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES:
Whenever there is an action that might have some deleterious impact on a key environmental value, then, obviously, that is taken into account.

PAWELSKI (on camera): Is that happening now, for example, Kosovo?

GORE: In some -- yes, it is. I don't want to get into a discussion of how targets are selected, but I will tell you that the No. 1 goal is to avoid unnecessary collateral damage. We don't want to have any harm to civilians. We are hitting military targets.

Well, we -- at the same time, we don't want collateral damage that can hurt the people of that area in other ways, such as through environmental harm that can hurt people. So these things are taken into account.

PAWELSKI (voice-over): Even as Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic faces face charges brought by the International War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague, Yugoslavia has brought its case to the World Court, accusing NATO of war crimes, including environmental ones. The United Nations is investigating. So far, it says it has found no evidence of significant pollution from the war.

As in every war, it is almost impossible to find out exactly what is happening on the ground. And each side is spinning what is known to fit its own agenda.

As refugees flee Kosovo, many are seeking refuge in Europe's poorest country. Albania's infrastructure,including its water and sewage systems, allow for a lot of pollution. The added pressure of hundreds of thousands of refugees isn't helping.

Rick Lockridge has just returned from the camps. He files this report.

RICK LOCKRIDGE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): It makes a pretty picture, but you wouldn't want to drink the water from this Albanian irrigation canal.

KEN ISAACS, SAMARITAN'S PURSE RELIEF ORGANIZATION: The canal water is not safe to drink. You know, it's got a lot of bacteriological problems. It has got, I'm sure, herbicides and pesticides and standard runoff things off of farmland.

LOCKRIDGE: And yet moments later he is drinking that very water.
(on camera): How is it?

ISAACS: It's delicious, tastes great. Do you want to try it?

LOCKRIDGE (voice-over): And so are we.

ISAACS: Still good.

LOCKRIDGE (on camera): I don't know if I can do this.
(voice-over): And soon refugees will be drinking it, too -- in a satisfying, if rare, demonstration of technology living up to our expectations. Providing enough water for the refugees is just one problem among many facing aid workers in Albania and Macedonia, but it is a serious one.

At this camp, a man steps to the front of the water line. "Just let me have a drink," he says.

He gets the last of it. The rest of these people will have to wait.

Aid workers say there is never more than barely enough water.

ISAACS: The daily ration of water for each person is 40 liters. That is -- What? -- about 10 gallons of water a day. And a certain amount of that needs to be, you know, suitable for drinking, safe to drink. And the rest of it's for utility purposes: to wash you're clothes and dishes and so on.

LOCKRIDGE: Forty liters a day in a camp built for 10,000 refugees is 400,000 liters, or about 120 of these to be filled every day.

That was the daunting task that lay ahead of the aid group Samaritan's Purse as it rushed to open this new camp in northwestern Albania in late May.

ISAACS: The site right here is not an ideal for a refugee camp. It's low. The Adriatic Sea is only about a mile off to my left, and the drainage is bad, and there is no ground water here.

LOCKRIDGE: That is where these two Israeli-made portable filtration systems come in.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: OK. This is a power plant for the reverse osmosis machine.

LOCKRIDGE: Reverse osmosis -- you've probably heard that phrase before, but what does it mean? Here the water from the canal goes through two prefilters at the bottom, then is pumped at high pressure through a second set of filters at the top: such high pressure that it blew the hose off its fittings, giving engineer Berton Herring (ph) a faceful and demonstrating why the trailer has drainage holes drilled into it.

BERTON HERRING, ENGINEER: And since the units are brand new, you know, the clamps may not have been tightened up

LOCKRIDGE: With all the fittings retightened, a second attempt brings about the desired result. Each trailer can supply 2,000 to 4,000 liters an hour of water clean enough to drink. Hamallah camp organizers say that will be just barely enough.

LOCKRIDGE: Technology has failed vividly and often in NATO's effort to sanitize the war. Perhaps it will redeem itself in more peaceful pursuits.

(voice-over): For EARTH MATTERS, I'm Rick Lockridge in Hamallah, Albania.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

PAWELSKI: Coming up: in the air, on land, in the water, the worst oil spill in history.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The ability to unleash massive oil slicks and other things causes environmental havoc on a scale unprecedented in human history.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PAWELSKI: Return to Kuwait for a look at how its war-torn environment is doing today. And later, some surprises onboard one of the Navy's newest ships.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

PAWELSKI: Welcome back. When it comes to war and the environment, the Persian Gulf War was a special case. Oil, which made Kuwait such an attractive target for Iraq, was turned into a weapon of mass destruction.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

(voice-over): Unforgettable fires, petroleum lakes, an ocean thick with oil, these were among most vivid images of the 1991 Gulf War.

Since then, Kuwait has been the site of remarkable cleanups and persistent problems.

PAULA DIPERNA, DOCUMENTARY FILM-MAKER: To cleanup those fires was a significant, significant success: testing new technology and just testing human wherewithal to be able to withstand the heat and the darkness and the soot.

PAWELSKI: Paula DiPerna directed the documentary "Kuwait: War and Environment." She found the land still bearing the scars of war. One of the biggest concerns: underground fresh water -- Kuwait's emergency backup for its desalinization plants -- still contaminated with oil.

DIPERNA: Once ground water is contaminated, it's virtually impossible to clean it up. So, that -- that will probably never be cleaned up and I think that's a tragedy.

PAWELSKI: On the saltwater side, marine life is doing well. Time and tide have dispersed the evidence of intentional spills that dwarfed the Exxon Valdez accident. But in places you can still find a hardened oily crust. Back on land a Herculean fire-fighting effort gave way to a giant oil recovery operation; 95 percent of the oil that contaminated the desert was recovered and removed.

DIPERNA: Kuwait is a relatively rich country and was able to afford the cleanup. If this war had been fought in any other country in the world, 95 percent of the destruction would still be there.

PAWELSKI: In places still contaminated with oil, researchers have seen some wildlife disappear. They are trying to figure out whether heavy metals are working their way up the food chain.

One of the war's deadliest leftovers: land mines. More than 30,000 are believed still hidden in the desert's shifting sands.

Since the war, mines and other exploding ordnance have killed or injured about 1,500 people. Also still in the desert, rusting trucks and tanks, and fields of debris, some of it radioactive from allied weapons that used depleted uranium ammunition. They will serve as reminders of a world at war for years, perhaps decades, to come.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

Still ahead, Vietnam back to ancient Rome and today in places around the globe: How war has changed the planet.

But first, the surprising fate of used-up plastic from cups to computers onboard the USS Ross.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ANNOUNCER: An international treaty bans all military activity on Antarctica.

PAWELSKI: Welcome back.

NATO ships cruising the Adriatic rely on a water-born bodyguard, the USS Ross and its state-of-the-art radar, to watch out for trouble. But it might surprise you to find out what else the Ross' crew keeps an eye out for.

Rick Lockridge has the story.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

LOCKRIDGE (voice-over): As long as ships have been made of steel, sailors have had to paint them. Any leftover paint or solvents were usually just chucked overboard. Not anymore.

Lunchtime in the enlisted mess. On the way out the crew carefully separates its garbage, making sure plastic only goes in here.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We discourage throwing plastics overside.

LOCKRIDGE: This is the Navy of the '90s. Not just leaner and meaner, but undeniably greener.

CAPTAIN DAVID THOMAS, COMMANDER, USS ROSS: There's a tremendous increase in environmental consciousness in the 20 areas that I've been onboard Navy ships.

LOCKRIDGE: Commander David Thomas captains the guided missile destroyer USS Ross and its more than 300 officers and crewmembers. And he sets an example by keeping his own stash of plastic trash.

THOMAS: When we're at sea, we are very careful not to dispose of anything nonbiodegradable over the side.

LOCKRIDGE: Since January 1st of this year, international law forbids all vessels except submarines from dumping plastics into the sea. Human waste may only be discharged in certain offshore zones. Food, paper and other biodegradable wastes must be shredded and turned into fine slurry before they can be dumped overboard. Metal and glass must be packaged so as to sink to the bottom.

Bilge water with more than 15 parts of oil per million is by law too greasy to go back into the sea, so the USS Ross sends its bilge water through this contraption: an oily water separator.

THOMAS: Now, the discharge over the side is of clean, fresh water, and we retain the oil onboard for disposal ashore.

LOCKRIDGE: Toxic liquids aboard the Ross are locked in a vault.

MARY CLARE SANCHEZ, HAZMAT OFFICER, USS ROSS: If anything were to happen in here, it's going to stay in here.

LOCKRIDGE: Everything from oils to antifreeze to cleaning solutions is carefully tracked.

SANCHEZ: And we know who uses it, when they use it and how often they use it.

I just don't like throwing anything away if I don't have to. Reuse it and I'll wait until we pull into port when we dispose of it properly.

LOCKRIDGE: To meet its goal of zero-emission ships, the Navy has had to install some clever technology, like this system for plastics: shred it, hook it, and press it.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And what we have now is the standard hockey puck (UNINTELLIGIBLE) we call it for the plastic process. It can be as thin as this or as thick as 2 to 3 inches.

We come back to put them in storage.

LOCKRIDGE: The hockey pucks are stored in these cylinders, saving room that's badly needed for other things on this relatively small ship.

Anything plastic is fair game for the hockey-puck machine. This computer fell out of favor with ship technicians. It was a crushing disappointment.

Polished and immaculate, the 2-year-old Ross appears to be the poster ship for what the Navy calls its Environmentally Sound Ship Initiative.

But how much of that is rules and regulations and how much is heartfelt environmental concern on the part of the crew?

LIEUTENANT KATE PERRAULT, WEAPONS OFFICER: Society in general is becoming a lot more conscious of these things, and as a result the Navy is becoming more conscious of these things. And I think that is one big push.

But also I think individual people, individual sailors are really starting to have a lot more concern for it.

LOCKRIDGE (on camera): Navy veterans of a certain age would doubtless be surprised by the new traditions of separating paper from plastic and oil from water. But they would appreciate the underlying sentiment: a fundamental respect for the sea.

For EARTH MATTERS, I'm Rick Lockridge aboard the USS Ross in the Adriatic.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

PAWELSKI: Coming up, a new millennium may see a new kind of war.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BLACKWELDER: Environmental degradation translates directly into economic stress, which translates into social and political upheaval.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PAWELSKI: Find out why some believe the roots of tomorrow's conflicts are already growing in the environmental problems of today.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ANNOUNCER: Land mines kill or maim an estimated 20 million people every year.

PAWELSKI: Next week on EARTH MATTERS...

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You can see the major cut here and here.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PAWELSKI: A labor of love to save some of the elder statesmen of the sea.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: These wonderful animals who have survived for hundreds of millions of years are in trouble, and the fault is ours.
(END VIDEO CLIP)

PAWELSKI: Find out how one woman has created a haven for the injured animals. Turning the tide for troubled turtles, next week.

The cost of war, it is calculated in lives lost and cities ruined. But after a peace returns, when time comes to rebuild, another cost emerges: damage done to the earth and to the land on which the future must be built.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
(voice-over): Missiles, jets, bombs -- the usual weapons of war. But there are other, less obvious weapons available.

Terror, intimidation and the environment.

BLACKWELDER: Certainly the environment always seems to suffer as a result of war and conflict, sometimes deliberately so. In the case of the Gulf War, Saddam Hussein deliberately bombed oil facilities and released oil slicks.

PAWELSKI: Targeting the land itself: It is a tactic at least as old as the Romans who salted the ground of enemy states so nothing would grow.

A more modern application, Vietnam. Defoliant like Agent Orange, designed to take away the enemy's place to hide and help American forces, ended up hurting the health of both.

BLACKWELDER: Environmental destruction was a deliberate tactic used by the United States. We tried to deforest and defoliate the entire country, and we succeeded maybe in demolishing a third or -- of the tropical rain forest.

PAWELSKI: In theory, international treaties now require the military to keep the environment in mind.

GEOFFREY DABELKO, WOODROW WILSON CENTER: Even just in preparations for war, the military and their day-to-day operations and training and such take into it account. Now, it's obviously a different situation once war starts. But I don't think that we should just give them a free pass and say, OK, all rules are off.

PAWELSKI: Of course, when soldiers are trying to kill each other, preserving the environment is not high on their list of priorities. But sometimes, the military ends up conserving by accident.

In the demilitarized zone between the two Koreas, for example, wildlife experts say some plants and animals thrive as they do nowhere else on the peninsula. The same sort of thing happened at the United States Savannah River site long off limits as a nuclear bomb-making factory.

Now, while some parts remain lethally polluted, other areas provide prime wildlife habitat -- an oasis in the middle of the sprawling Southeast.

Looking into the next millennium, one popular theory holds that wars will be all about the environment as an ever-growing number of people competes for food, water and land.

(on camera): Do you think that that combination of more people and a scarcity of resources -- is that going to be our next big global challenge?

GORE: I think it's a global challenge right now. And that trend is increasing.

In some areas, already we're seeing terrible pressures that result in a shortage of food, a shortage of clean water. These kinds of problems have to be addressed in a lot of different ways: better assistance for health care and more food exports from the United States, but also more attention to the environment where these people live.

PAWELSKI: The goal would be to see fewer places like Haiti where a ruined environment made life unbearable after political and economic meltdown. Otherwise ruined landscapes could give birth not just to refugees, but to tomorrow's wars.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

And that's all the time we have. Thank you for joining us. We'll see you next week on EARTH MATTERS.

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