SCOTUS to consider case challenging U.S. Air Force's open detonation of bombs, munitions in Guam

(PR) The U.S. Supreme Court granted the Trump administration’s request to hear a case over the U.S. Air Force’s ongoing practice of openly detonating hazardous bombs and other munitions in Guam without the environmental review required under federal law.

The case, Department of the Air Force v. Prutehi Guåhan, concerns whether the Air Force can be sued over its decision to conduct open burning and detonation operations on a beach in Guam, and if the Air Force violated the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) when it failed to conduct the legally required environmental review beforehand. Last February, the Ninth Circuit confirmed the Air Force can be sued for its decision — and that it must comply with NEPA.

Earthjustice is representing Prutehi Guåhan — a Guam-based group dedicated to the protection of the island’s natural and cultural resources — which sued the Air Force for violating NEPA before detonating bombs and other explosive hazardous waste out in the open on Tarague Beach. The Air Force’s disposal operations threaten significant harm to the surrounding environment, including by contaminating an aquifer that supplies more than 80 percent of the drinking water for the U.S. territory’s population. Contaminants from the explosions also enter the ocean, threatening harm to local residents who frequent nearby beaches, as well as to culturally significant fishing sites, endangered green sea turtles, and migratory seabirds.

“We continue to carry many scars of war and war games that remain in our landscape, our bodies, and in our hearts and minds,” said Monaeka Flores of Prutehi Guåhan. “We deserve justice for the harms that we continue to endure through the military’s ongoing practice of open detonation of hazardous materials. This decision only slows that delivery of justice for our island.”

“For years, the Air Force has chosen to dispose of its munitions stockpile by exploding bombs on our clients’ ancestral lands and threatening most of Guam’s drinking water supply,” said David Henkin, deputy managing attorney of Earthjustice’s Mid-Pacific regional office. “Federal law gives our clients a pathway to force the Air Force first to take a hard look at the consequences of that choice and consider less environmentally destructive ways to get the job done. Now that the Supreme Court has decided to hear the case, we will continue to defend Guam residents’ ability to protect their health, their land, and their resources.”