Community Meeting on Proposed Military Bombing Range on Padre Island National Seashore.

Packery.Com - Information source for the proposed Packery Channel Project...

Home

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]
bsybert@igc.org

Home