This Video is a Part of: "You're killing me": How whales and dolphins sacrifice for national security

An audio version of this story was published by the Public News Service on August 13, 2010.

The general consensus, with which courts over the past decade have largely agreed, says high-intensity mid-frequency sonar can kill whales and dolphins. The National Marine Fisheries Services – part of the National Oceanic and Atmosphere Administration – explicitly allows Navy sonar tests and training exercises to result in the deaths of specific numbers of whales and dolphins as long as they have a negligible impact to the population.

In 2008, during RIMPAC exercises, a Cuvier’s beaked whale washed up dead on a beach on Molokai, a small Hawaiian island. Mark Matsunaga, a Navy spokesman, says there's nothing to indicate Navy activity was involved in that stranding. The Navy’s use of sonar in the area ceased at least 72 hours before the whale stranded, Matsunaga says.

Another event in 2004, where 200 Melon-headed whales showed up confused and out of place in Hanalei Bay, Kauai, is still the subject of controversy. While the Navy contends that sonar was too far away on the other side of the island to affect the whales, environmentalists point to sonar as the culprit. But multiple scientific articles have highlighted that a full moon could have been at play.

The largest international naval exercise in the world off the waters of Hawaii known as the 2010 Rim of the Pacific or RIMPAC exercise involved 14 nations including South Korea, Thailand, Colombia, Peru and Malaysia with a total of 32 ships, five submarines, more than 170 aircraft and 20,000 personnel.

One of the primary threats the month-long series of exercises were designed to address comes from quiet diesel-engine submarines, which national security experts say North Korea, Iran and other potential adversarial nations possess. The best way to detect something as quiet as a submarine running nearly entirely on battery power – as opposed to a noisy nuclear sub – is with high-intensity active sonar, which sends out pulses of mid-frequency sound as loud as a rocket blast underwater.

The general consensus, with which courts over the past decade have largely agreed, says high-intensity mid-frequency sonar can kill whales and dolphins. The National Marine Fisheries Services – part of the National Oceanic and Atmosphere Administration – explicitly allows Navy sonar tests and training exercises to result in the deaths of specific numbers of whales and dolphins as long as they have a negligible impact to the population.

DC Bureau’s documentary “The Marcellus Shale: The Politics of Gas” reveals the controversy surrounding natural gas production in New York. While skeptics of production fear hydraulic fracturing, a widely used technique to extract gas, will ruin the state’s pristine waterways, proponents tout potential economic benefits.

The political situation surrounding natural gas in New York is tainted. DC Bureau discovered the same year a powerful republican state senator endorsed industry-drafted revisions to gas mining laws, his law firm represented the largest natural gas producer in the state. Partners at the firm also advised local residents on real estate transactions involving mineral rights. In addition, DC Bureau revealed a liberal Upstate congressman championed strict control over hydraulic fracturing at the same time his wife lobbied for the American Association of Professional Landmen, whose members acquired gas leases in the state for energy companies.

With investors rallying support to drill in the New York portion of the Marcellus Shale – which geological experts say may hold the world’s largest store of natural gas, the race to tap into natural gas in this pre-Jurassic formation has begun.

As a mustard yellow bulldozer about the size of a Jeep Rubicon rumbles forward and reverses hurling dirt into the air, cars rattle down Earhart Boulevard in New Orleans. The spring sun beams down baking six construction workers in neon yellow vests and white hard hats as they prepare to concrete the gutted neutral ground. Greg Dabalos, a concrete finisher from Command Construction Industries based out of Metairie, La., says his company did not tell him what used to exist on the grassy parcel across the street in this mainly black community. But before he could respond to additional questions, an employee from the construction company exited a truck and crossed the street directing all inquiries to their office.

Unlike Dabalos, long-time residences of Gert Town know what occupied this barren lot surrounded by a five and a half-foot barbed wire fence. They blame activities that occurred there for damaging their health – causing cancer, respiratory problems and other adverse effects. And a class action suit by neighbors against companies that made and stored an arsenal of lethal chemicals there – including DDT and toxic dry-cleaning fluids – tore the community apart.

“The real bad time of the operation was during the Vietnam War,” says Frank Edwards, one of the lawyers who represented Gert Town residents in the class action suit against plant operators. “They actually made Agent Orange there.”

A smashed Community Coffee cup and an empty bag of Lay’s barbecue potato chips line the five and a half-foot barbed wire fence around this once lethal grassy parcel. An unlocked gate allows easy access to this site, where plant operators cooked DDT and the main component of Agent Orange.

Dorothy Leonard, who lives across the street from this barren lot, says children play there. Although no sign identifies this site in the center of this low-income New Orleans community – now restricted to commercial or industrial use, long-time residents of Gert Town remember the Thompson-Hayward chemical plant once located there. A class action suit against companies that operated the facility ruined relationships between neighbors.

“The people had complained about the smell and the burning eyes and they couldn’t sit on their porches,” said Frank Edwards, one of the lawyers who represented Gert Town residents in the class action suit against plant operators. “It was in their houses and it was in their attics and it was under their houses.”

 

Spanish moss cascades from the twisted branches of live oaks shading New Orleans streets and luring tourists out of the French Quarter to pristine neighborhoods, like the Garden District. But few visitors venture to Gert Town, dominated by the old, gigantic Blue Plate sign. This sparsely inhabited neighborhood is home to Xavier University and the birthplace of famous musician Allen Toussaint. Floodwaters up to seven feet from Hurricane Katrina inundated Gert Town for about two weeks. Now, most businesses there are liquor-filled corner stores.

Although Gert Town was never a tourist mecca, it was booming industrially in the mid 20th century. Companies, including Coco-Cola and Blue Plate Fine Foods, opened factories there. But since few citizens questioned businesses moving into their community, the deadly potions operators brewed at the Thompson-Hayward chemical plant on Earhart Boulevard remained a mystery for nearly half a century.

Toxic chemicals have plagued this crime-ridden community since a former St. Louis-based chemical company began producing herbicides and pesticides there in 1941.  Between 2006 and 2007 – nearly a decade after class action litigation against plant operators by Gert Town residents, crews removed the noxious legacy on the 2.7-acre parcel, where workers made DDT and the main component of Agent Orange. But the community is still fighting to get U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to remove the poisons that leached into their soil from the chemical plant. And construction on a high-traffic road abutting the site of this once lethal facility has alarmed neighbors.