FAS | Intelligence | Agencies | Overhead | Area 51 |||| Index | Search |

Area 51 - Groom Lake, NV
Toxic Waste Burn Pits

02 April 2000 - IKONOS 1-meter Imagery

In 1994 several former contract employees who worked at Groom Lake, filed a lawsuit claiming that toxic waste was routinely burned in open are burial trenches and that they suffered health-related illness including cancer. The Clinton administration citing national security concerns, exempted the Air Force from the Environmental Protection Agency automatic public disclosure required by the Superfund Law, also known as Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA). In the exemption President Clinton wrote "I hereby exempt the Air Froce's operating location near Groom Lake, Nevada. . . from any applicalbe requirement forthe diclusre to unauthoized person of classified information concerning" the site. The waste trenches in question appear in the 1968 and 1988 imagery. Indeed, the 1968 imagery discloses a very distinctive "black spot" that is probably soot from burning activities. Ikonos imagery tends to supports the conclusion that the EPA did in fact conduct an environmental cleanup and remediation. Scrape and fill marks in the area of the waste trenches is consistent with those seen in other Superfund clean-up remediation.

Credit: spaceimaging.com. Copyright (c) Space Imaging. All RIGHTS RESERVED.
Online and news media distribution or publishing requires permission from Space Imaging.

FAS | Intelligence | Agencies | Overhead | Area 51 |||| Index | Search |