Campaign Unavailable

Please help require the U.S. Air Force to clean up the drastic contamination it created at Johnston Island.

Johnston Atoll is an "unincorporated territory" of the United States managed by the U.S. Air Force and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife.

Johnston Atoll in the central Pacific Ocean has been a National Wildlife Refuge since 1926, and is a nesting ground for green sea turtles, provides habitat for 300 species of fish and is essential nesting grounds for 20 species of migratory birds. It is one of eight Refuges that provide protection and conservation for a unique, vast and integrated network of islands, atolls and related marine waters in the central Pacific. The coral reefs provide food and habitat for fish, marine mammals and turtles migrating from the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands.

Johnston Atoll is one of the most contaminated areas occupied by the U. S. military. In the 1950s and 1960s, the U.S. Air Force conducted 12 test launchings of nuclear missiles at Johnston Atoll. In 1962 two of the tests were aborted as the missiles exploded on the runway contaminating the area with torrents of nuclear radiation (New York Times, January 27, 2003).

The U.S. also used Johnston Atoll to store and incinerate nerve gas and chemical agents.

Thousands of cubic meters of radioactive waste have been buried in an unlined 25-acre landfill at Johnston Atoll. The EPA has said that anything buried on Johnston Island faces the likelihood of being released into the ocean as the island erodes.

The Air Force plans to leave buried plutonium and other extremely hazardous materials on a low lying atoll with rising water levels, storm events and no adequate monitoring or response mechanisms is not an acceptable solution.

Table coral species found at Johnston Atoll are believed to be the nursery stock of the same species that have been documented at French Frigate Shoals, Hawaiian Islands National Wildlife Refuge, which is 450 miles north of Johnston Atoll.

Please comment and urge the Air Force to remove all radioactive and chemical contamination from Johnston Atoll and ship it to federally licensed disposal sites on the continental U.S., where it can be monitored and kept isolated from the environment. Do not allow the Air Force to leave Johnston Atoll in its current condition. Mahalo nui.

If you would like to view details on this alert, please visit here.