Base construction destroyed Diego Garcia’s reef and forest and leaked radioactivity and Agent Orange.

Evidence

The trail of environmental damage is hardly confined to South Korea. When construction of the base on Diego Garcia started in 1971, Navy Seabees used bulldozers and chains to rip coconut trees from the ground. They blasted the island’s reef with explosives to excavate thousands of tons of coral for building a runway. Diesel fuel sludge began fouling the water. Billions of dollars in construction has followed, resulting in considerable environmental damage: additional large-scale blasting and deep dredging of eleven square miles of coral reef; clear-cutting of thousands of trees and other vegetation, including the habitat for threatened wildlife species; radioactive contamination due to leaks from nuclear-propelled ships and submarines; and the likely contamination of soil and groundwater following the widely reported use of Agent Orange to clear jungle foliage. — David Vine, Base Nation_ How U.S. Military Bases…, 411

Categorization

• XREF: Extends the environmental damage catalog from earlier chapters on South Korea bases.