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HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES             H.R. NO.              
TWENTIETH LEGISLATURE, 2000                                
STATE OF HAWAII                                            
                                                             
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                     HOUSE  RESOLUTION

  URGING THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT TO TAKE APPROPRIATE ACTION
    TO ADDRESS THE SERIOUS ENVIRONMENTAL AND PUBLIC HEALTH
    PROBLEMS POSED BY THE TOXIC WASTES LEFT BEHIND AT FORMER
    UNITED STATES MILITARY INSTALLATIONS IN THE PHILIPPINES.
 


 1        WHEREAS, the United States and the people of Hawaii have
 2   had long historical, cultural, and economic ties with the
 3   people of the Philippines as part of the Pacific-Asia
 4   community; and
 5   
 6        WHEREAS, Filipinos all over the world, including the
 7   Filipino American community in Hawaii and the United States and
 8   their friends, recently commemorated the centennial of the
 9   birth of the Republic of the Philippines, a culmination of the
10   Filipino peoples' struggle for freedom and independence against
11   Spanish colonial rule on June 12, 1898; and
12   
13        WHEREAS, in December 1992, United States military forces
14   withdrew from Clark Air Base and Subic Naval Base, thus ending
15   almost a century of United States military presence in the
16   Philippines; and
17   
18        WHEREAS, reports from the United States General Accounting
19   Office, United States Department of Defense, the World Health
20   Organization, United States experts and environmental baseline
21   surveys conducted by American firms and recent media reports,
22   including those conducted by the Boston Globe and CNN,
23   identified serious contamination at forty-six sites at both
24   Clark and Subic bases; and
25   
26        WHEREAS, many of the chemicals identified, such as
27   polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), Aldrin, Dieldrin, Benzene,
28   and Heptachlor, are part of the family chemicals known as
29   persistent organic pollutants (POPs) because of their
30   persistence in the environment and association with health
31   problems like cancer, reproductive failure, and behavior
32   disorders; and
33   
34        WHEREAS, a "Health for All" survey conducted by
35   internationally-recognized health expert Doctor Rosalie Bertell
36   on behalf of the Canadian Institute for the Concern for Public

 
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                                  H.R. NO.              
                                                        
                                                        


 1   Health and released in November 1998 found conspicuously high
 2   and disparate levels of kidney, urinary, nervous, and female
 3   system health problems among 716 families surveyed in the Clark
 4   air base area alone; and
 5   
 6        WHEREAS, on January 27, 1999, the Philippines House of
 7   Representatives Committee on Ecology released a report holding
 8   the United States responsible for the toxic wastes left behind
 9   in the former United States military bases at Clark and Subic,
10   which threaten to make these areas economically devastated, and
11   largely uninhabitable and unusable; and
12   
13   
14        WHEREAS, the Filipino American community, including the
15   National Federation of Filipino American Associations (NFFAA),
16   and various church groups, such as the Church Coalition for
17   Human Rights in the Philippines and the 20th General Synod of
18   the United Church of Christ (United States), have expressed
19   grave concern for the United States government's lack of
20   response and responsibility over its legacy of toxic wastes in
21   the Philippines; now, therefore,
22   
23        BE IT RESOLVED by the House of Representatives of the
24   Twentieth Legislature of the State of Hawaii, Regular Session
25   of 2000, that this body expresses its strong concern for the
26   serious environmental problems caused by toxic wastes left
27   behind by the United States and the grave threat these wastes
28   pose to public health in the communities adjoining its former
29   bases in Clark and Subic; and
30   
31        BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that this body calls on the United
32   States government to assist the Philippines, which has neither
33   the funds nor the technical capacity to conduct an
34   environmental clean up, as it has already done in cleaning up
35   toxic contamination in overseas United States military bases in
36   Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom, and in other countries; and
37   
38        BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that certified copies of this
39   Resolution be transmitted to the President of the United
40   States, the President pro tempore of the United States Senate,
41   the Speaker of the United States House of Representatives, the

 
 
 
 
 
 
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 1   Secretary of State, the Secretary of Defense, the Administrator
 2   of the Environmental Protection Agency, the members of Hawaii's
 3   congressional delegation, and the Governor of Hawaii.
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