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6.11 p.m. ET (2222 GMT) June 6, 2000
By Chris Hawley, Associated Press

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) - Environmental activists clashed with a U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission official Tuesday over cleanup plans that could leave buried some of the radioactive depleted uranium rounds mistakenly fired on the Navy's Vieques bombing range.

"The risk of leaving a few buried in the ground is minimal,'' Luis A. Reyes, the commission's regional director, told a news conference attended by several activists. "It should not cause problems in the bombing range because it is an area restricted to the public.''

His announcement outraged environmentalists who have been demanding the Navy clean up 263 rounds mistakenly fired from two Marine Corps Harrier jets on Feb. 19, 1999, in violation of federal law and Navy regulations that restrict their use to combat zones. The Navy recovered 57 rounds last year.

"You are accomplices with the Navy ... to harming the health of the people of Vieques,'' Sarah Peisch of Puerto Rico's private Environmental Protection Center told Reyes.

Reyes said the ammunition was only slightly radioactive and that toxic particles may cause diseases if they get into the lungs or other parts of the body. Prolonged contact would cause a sunburn-like injury, he added.

Reyes said the cleanup equipment the Navy uses can penetrate only 10 inches into the sandy ground while the ammunition, designed to explode through an armored tank, may be buried much deeper.

The Navy would have to excavate a 200-foot by half-mile strip to find all the ammunition, he said. The commission would order that only if President Clinton orders the Navy out of Vieques, he said. Clinton has promised he would do that if residents vote to expel the military in a referendum expected next year.

The commission would begin collecting soil, water and plant samples on Wednesday to determine if any radioactive residue reached civilian areas, he said. The island's biggest town is 11 miles away.

But the commission had no plans to test after military maneuvers resume with shells and dummy bombs, probably later this summer.

That brought objections from Doug Rokke, a former Pentagon consultant on depleted uranium who has backed Vieques militants: "If those rounds are still coming in and blasting up dust and those (depleted uranium) particles, then we are looking at a serious and continuing hazard.''

The Navy notified the commission about the February 1999 accident but failed to tell the Puerto Rican government. The news surfaced only three months later through an unrelated Freedom of Information Act request from an environmental group.

Two months after the accident, a Marine F-18 jet dropped two bombs off target in the range and killed a civilian guard.

The incidents fueled resentment against the live bombings on a 20-mile-long island inhabited by 9,300 people. Protesters invaded the range and camped out there for a year until federal agents forced them out last month.

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