MAKAH RESERVATION, Wash. (WMR)—Corporations, in league with federal and state governments, have established a new protocol to deal with major environmental disasters. Using the twin weapons of secretive clean-ups and public relations media blitzes, corporations have a new weapon to add to their other programs of austerity and privatization to seize control of the planet from the people who inhabit it.
With radioactive and toxic debris from the March 2011 Japanese earthquake, tsunami, and Fukushima nuclear disaster beginning to wash ashore in large amounts along the coasts of Washington, Oregon, and British Columbia, state and federal officials, along with private contractors, have instituted the very same protocol for a covert clean up instituted by British Petroleum, the federal government, and Gulf coast state governments for the Deepwater Horizon oil deluge in the Gulf of Mexico. Just as debris and dead marine life is constantly scooped up by heavy equipment along the beaches of the Gulf, often in darkness during the wee hours of the morning, debris from the Japanese quake and tsunami are being secured by contractors and prison labor as soon as beached debris or large debris items soon to wash shore are spotted by observers.
In order to prevent researchers and journalists from testing the debris for radiation, items found on the beaches of Washington are transported to special containers which are then used to transport the debris to the Hanford nuclear waste facility in Richland, Washington. Radiation levels have been found to be high around areas where debris retrieval from the beach has been conducted.
WMR has learned that prisoners serving time in two local state prisons in Clallam Bay and Forks, both on the Olympic Peninsula, are being pressed into service for beach cleanup.
Sources on the Makah tribal reservation at the northwestern tip of the Olympic Peninsula report that the bulk of debris has been spotted far out to sea by local fishermen. However, beginning last year, debris from Japan, including a bottle of sake and a can of insecticide, began washing ashore on native beaches.
The aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan, which participated in disaster relief off the Japanese east coast following the earthquake and tsunami of 2011 received a high level of radiation from the Fukushima reactor. There is currently a federal class action lawsuit against the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant operator Tokyo Electric Power (TEPCO) by crewmen on board the carrier who received hazardous doses of radiation.
In mid-March, the Reagan left the naval ship yard at Bremerton, Washington, for its home port of San Diego after radioactive fittings from the ship, including radioactive potable water pipes, exposed on-deck fittings, and air conditioning ducts, were removed from the vessel. The Navy has been in cover-up mode on the true reasons for the carrier’s overhaul but WMR learned from U.S. Navy shipyard sources in Bremerton, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, that the radioactive material from the Reagan was transported by train to the Hanford nuclear waste site in eastern Washington for burial.
Less radioactive debris from the Reagan was transported to the Waste Management, Inc. Riverbend landfill in McMinnville, Oregon, according to the Bremerton sources.
The Japanese government has paid $5 million to the state of Washington and $1 million to the state of Oregon as compensation for cleanup of radioactive debris. However, little of the money is reaching the small communities that have been affected by the high levels of radioactive waste. As with BP’s petty contributions to the people of the affected area of the Gulf, greedy mega-corporations are more interested in quick compensation and cover-ups than in fairness.
Previously published in the Wayne Madsen Report.
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Wayne Madsen is a Washington, DC-based investigative journalist and nationally-distributed columnist. He is the editor and publisher of the Wayne Madsen Report (subscription required).
