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U.S. Defense Department Returns Johnson Atoll to Nature
The U.S. Defense Department is restoring Johnson Atoll to a natural state after almost 70 years of military control and a huge chemical weapons incineration effort, the Honolulu Star-Bulletin reported yesterday (see GSN,). Officials are scheduled to finish removing almost all man-made structures from the four-island Pacific Ocean atoll by next summer. The incinerator, the facility’s security fences and the armed guards are already gone, according to the Star-Bulletin. After the U.S. Army took two years to build an 80,000-square-foot chemical weapons disposal facility, it took “only two months to demolish it,” said Gary McCloskey, site manager for the Johnston Atoll Chemical Agent Disposal System. The U.S. Air Force is now charged with completing the atoll’s return to nature. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will monitor the islands for the military. “Our job is to monitor the wildlife resources there,” said Don Palawski, refuge manager for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife’s Pacific Remote Islands National Wildlife Refuge Complex. “That allows them to focus on their main mission,” he added (Gregg Kakesako, Honolulu Star-Bulletin, Nov. 6).
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