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X-Sender: [log in to unmask]
Date: Sat, 30 Jun 2001 12:42:00 -0500
Reply-To: Brian Sybert <[log in to unmask]>
Sender: Lone Star Chapter Action Alerts
<[log in to unmask]>
From: Brian Sybert <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Action Alert #18
To: [log in to unmask]
Community Meeting on Proposed Military Bombing Range on Padre Island
National Seashore
No to Vieques!
No to Vieques in Texas!
When: Thursday, July 5 6:30 PM to 8:30 PM
Where: Austin History Center (801 Guadalupe)
What: Community Meeting, Panel Presentation
Why: To Learn About and Build Opposition to a Military Bombing Range
on the South Texas Coast
Who: Meeting Hosted by Lone Star Sierra Club (477-1729)
Invited panelists include:
*Fred Richardson--Explantion of Proposal to Move the Vieques Bombing
Range to Texas
Lourdes Perez--What's Happening in Vieques
*Alan Pogue--Effects of Depleted Uranium Weapons in Iraq
Karen Chapman--Environmental Impacts to Padre Island and Laguna Madre Estuary
*Rahul Mahajan--US Militarism
Representative from Southwest Public Workers Union, San
Antonio--Impacts of Toxic Plume under Neighborhoods Near Kelly Air
Force Base
*=confirmed
*********************************************************
The threat is very serious. Corpus Christi and Kingsville chamber of
commerce boosters, US Rep. Solomon Ortiz from Corpus, and apparently
Karl Rove (Bush's Chief of Staff) are all pushing for opening a
military bombing range approximately 5 times the size of the island
of Vieques in South Texas.
Groups across Texas are mobilizing to present swift and massive
opposition to the insane plan to turn the Padre Island National
Seashore and the Laguna Madre estuary into a warfare training center
and bombing range. At least 5,000 people are expected to road-trip to
the beach August 17-19 for a mass demonstration and eco-tour.
Please attend this community meeting to hear the latest developments,
learn about the local, national, and international ramifications of
opening a large-scale military training ground in Texas, and
strategize on putting together an Austin contingent to a beach
protest at the proposed site in August.
Below is an excerpt from the June 27 New York Times article on the
proposed Texas bombing range explaining the proposal:
"After the Bush administration announced last week that it would bow to
protests and stop military bombing exercises on the Puerto Rican
island of Vieques in 2003, officials here unveiled a proposal to move
the maneuvers to a nearby area that would become an "expeditionary
warfare training center."
The plan, which is backed by many of the region's business and political
leaders, would create a training ground for bombing, ship-to-shore
shelling and amphibious troop landings on 222,000 acres of privately
owned ranchland just south of here in Kenedy County. It would attract
jobs and other military missions to the area's three naval sites and
insulate them from future cutbacks or base closings, said Dick
Messbarger, director of the Kingsville Economic Development Council.
Assaults by marines and armored vehicles along the 20 miles of coast
would require amphibious crafts to plow over the barrier beaches of
Padre Island National Seashore and then cut across the Intracoastal
Canal and the ecologically sensitive Laguna Madre, an estuarial
breeding ground of sea grasses. Those maneuvers could also require
three 1.24- mile-wide corridors across Padre Island, home to the
endangered Kemp's turtle.
The amphibious craft could also stir up sediment in the tidal flats,
destroy sensitive sea grasses and form "dead zones" in which no sea
life could exist, Mr. McMullen said. "In the event of a short-falling
shell, the chemicals in explosives could be extremely destructive to
marine life in the Laguna Madre," he said. "And that's before we get
into things like accidental spillages of fuel or chemicals."
*****************************************************
Below is an exerpt from a June 28 Scripps Howard News Service story
explaining that we aren't even supposed to know about the plan to
bomb Texas:
"Rep. Solomon Ortiz, D-Corpus Christi, expressed dismay that word had
prematurely leaked out that a 20-mile stretch of coastal Kenedy
County was under consideration as a possible alternative to the
Vieques facility, where Navy and Marine Corps warplanes, ships and
ground troops rehearse for combat.
At the testy House Armed Services Committee hearing, Ortiz said that
when word surfaced in the media June 21 about the White House's plan
for Vieques and interest in the Kingsville-area tract, it interrupted
a behind-the-scenes local effort to build backing for the plan before
airing it publicly.
"What we wanted to do was to have appropriate time to build that
consensus, and this is something that the local officials have asked
me," Ortiz told Navy Secretary Gordon England, Chief of Naval
Operations Adm. Vern Clark and deputy Defense Secretary Paul
Wolfowitz.
"And everything was going fine until this story leaked out."
For more information contact Erin Rogers or Fred Richardson at 477-1729
Brian Sybert
Lone Star Chapter, Sierra Club
512/477-1729
512/477-8526 [FAX]
[log in to unmask]
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