Prose & Comments: Plum Island yesterday, today & tomorrow
Opinions expressed in the Prose & Comments column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Shelter Island Reporter’s editorial staff.
By Bill Smith
The recent articles in the press about the future of Plum Island and the predictable posturing going on by our politicians who clearly know nothing about the island or the extent of the contamination is very disturbing. Equally disturbing are the environmental groups who again know nothing about the contamination there, or worse that don’t really care and only see the island and grabbing the management of it as a money generating golden nugget for what in most cases are self-perpetuating organizations.
I do know more than I care to about the once pristine island having been invited there for 2 tours in the late 90’s. At the time I was in the midst of stopping Plum Island from going to a Biosafety Level 4 facility and toured the island with the Department of Agriculture representatives who were trying to assure me that like Brookhaven Lab and their radioactive contamination of the Peconic River that – “All was well“, and that “There was nothing to worry about“. This despite the fact that countless tens of thousands of animals had died horrible deaths on the island after being injected with, exposed to, or fed poisons that we can’t even comprehend. All in the name of science. Many were caged or worse shackled in that large white building on the southwest shoreline of the island and then observed dying, many times slowly and agonizing deaths, again so that the scientists there could better understand the effects of these poisons on animals and ultimately masses of people. This because Plum Island was conceived in reality as a biological warfare research facility. The foot and mouth disease research was and continues to be a very transparent smokescreen. The idea of these innocent animals dying horrible deaths by injections of pathogens, or exposure to gasses is inexcusable.
The Plum Island facility was begun in 1947 in what was then the rural and sparsely populated eastern Long Island and Eastern Connecticut. It was designed and advised in large part by a former Nazi scientist Dr Eric Traub, who under a secret “Cancer Research Project” had been doing work on communicable diseases throughout World War II for the Nazi’s. His specialty was the transferral of communicable diseases to humans and cattle by ticks. Traub worked directly for Hitler’s second in charge SS Reich Fuehrer Heinrich Himmler, on a small and similar isolated island in the Baltic Sea. After the war, he was pursed heavily by the American military under what was then called “Project Paperclip” a program that feverishly sought out Nazi scientists like some sort of forbidden fruit, offering them citizenship, new identities and sanctuary in the US, after their pasts as high level Nazi’s had been “bleached” and there was no longer any record of the atrocities they were involved in. All they had to do was continue their work here. By the time this dark mark in our history was over we had imported more than 2000 Nazi Scientists and secretly integrated these war criminals into our society.
There is much documentation to confirm that Traub did indeed visit and work at Plum Island numerous times in the late 40’s and 50’s, most of the time on his passion – ticks and using them to infect the masses of whomever our perceived enemy at the time may be. For the Nazi’s during WWII it was to be Russia, Great Britain and then the United States. In the course of Traub’s work, other equally frightening biological research was done at Plum Island by Traub and others. Victims ranged from any mammal from a mouse to a horse or cow. In fact when Michael Jackson brought Lamas to his hideaway Neverland, some in government became so concerned that there may be Lamas in suburban backyards that they imported a bunch to Plum Island where they too were used as guinea pigs, being injected or exposed to deadly pathogens. They like all other animals which were brought to Plum Island were finally killed and either buried in mass graves or usually incinerated on that building which sits on Plum Island’s North shoreline.
Is Lyme disease related to Traub’s research? From the documents that I have read over the years I have no doubt that it is. I also have no doubt that West Nile which was another one of Plum Island’s scientists favorite pathogens escaped as foot and mouth disease has on numerous occasions and caused the very first case in the United States in a horse stable in Southold town.
With all these deadly and dangerous poisons that were being used on Plum Island beginning in 1947, also came the inevitable contamination. Plum Island quickly became a seriously contaminated island as waste generated from experiments and dead animals were buried on the island. I’ve fished off Plum Island since I was a very young boy and the massive smoke that is generated by the incinerators when they burn animal carcasses as well as the discharge of greenish colored waste water into Plum Gut, only during times when the tide is moving out always concerned me.
In the late 90’s when the Department of Agriculture was trying to save the facility from closing, I led a successful effort to stop this insanity and was fortunately successful in stopping Plum Island from expanding to a Biosafety Level 4 facility, which it very well already be, despite having to fund much of it out of pocket and with the help of a few generous people who were very concerned about what does go on there now. Again, as part of their effort to assure me that everything was OK on Plum Island, I was invited out for a private tour, complete with lectures, lunch as repeated assurances that “Everything is fine”.
On my second trip there, I was met at the ferry landing and driven around the island from end to end and north to south. What I saw at the time frankly scared the hell out of me and galvanized my belief that Plum Island was not only a dangerous facility in the middle of a huge population center, but also that for decades the toxic waste generated there had been treated in a carefree and very dangerous manner, and had in all likelihood been responsible for Lyme disease and West Nile.
My visit was just prior to any clean ups beginning, and what I saw were literally hundreds and hundreds of little colored flags marking sites where they were able to determine through what records were kept and interviews with past employees were sites that held anything from contaminated test tubes and beakers to drums of poisons, badly contaminated animals that were not incinerated and even radioactivity which was buried. Radioactivity, because there was a small brick building on the island that said “Cobalt-60” on the entrance. When I asked about the hundreds of marked sites, I was told again that these were the ones which they were able to identify, meaning that the possibility of many others that are today still unknown may still exist but not to worry, they were going to be “cleaned up”. No one knew at all that radioactivity had been a commonly used isotope and left behind untold amounts of contamination that in reality can never be cleaned up. But “don’t worry” I was repeatedly told, we’re going to clean it up. Well the half-life of Cobalt 60 is 5.2714 years, so cleaning it up, will never happen.
The reality is that like the radioactivity in the Peconic River that I uncovered in 1995, there is no possible way that all that contamination could ever be cleaned up on Plum Island, even if they knew where it all was and what pathogens were buried. They don’t. What was buried has leached through the soil, possibly into the groundwater, been released into the air and in many cases become part of the earth in many areas. It also has been dumped into our estuaries causing damage that we will never know. In short, Plum Island is today still a toxic nightmare no matter how much the government, our clueless politicians and now the Department of Homeland Security would lead you to believe is not the case. The island is a very dangerous toxic nightmare. In fact, there are still countless areas of buried toxic waste that they have no idea of being able to find and are not even looking.
The idea of putting homes on Plum Island is frightening. The liability associated with it would be off the charts as people drank potentially contaminated water, watered their lawns with it, bathed in it, or just breathed the fumes emanating from the ground all over the island.
Trump’s golf course and the excavation associated with it, would release vast and unknown amounts of contamination into the air and water, only to bury it again. From a rational standpoint both ideas are completely insane, and only motivated by the worst types of greed.
What does make sense for Plum Island’s future I believe is one of two things.
• Leave it as is after removing the buildings used for experiments and trying to remediate the soil around them. Then have a third party agency or group monitor the air, groundwater and soil to insure that the contamination is not moving
OR MOST IMPORTANT
• After a true remediation and only in areas where there would be no danger to humans, turn Plum Island into an ALTERNATIVE ENERGY FACILITY and create many more local jobs than currently are there. These ‘jobs’ that our uninformed politicians like to point to are only another smokescreen and again show just how little they really know about the island.
That because at LEAST 30% of the current employees live in Connecticut and commute back and forth on the diesel fuel drinking ferries. These boats go back and forth all day long, many times with just 1 person aboard, in addition to the crew. The cost to ferry these employees to and from Connecticut has to number in the millions of dollars annually and is yet another example of government wasting our tax dollars in the most irresponsible manner imaginable. But that’s another issue.
By turning Plum Island into an alternative energy facility, we could utilize its very unique position to generate wind, solar and tidal power, much of which could then be used to power some homes or businesses on the East End. We could also use Plum Island as a research facility for these types of energy to refine them and make them even more efficient, so that in the near future consumers could use better, cheaper and more efficient solar panels or wind generators in their yards.
By converting the island to an alternative energy facility, we could also create hundreds of LOCAL jobs, with people who would live on the East End, buy or rent homes here, send their children to schools here and spend their money here instead of in Connecticut.
The list of positive possibilities for an alternative energy Plum Island facility is frankly endless and with the right people behind it could be a real and working possibility even before the island is shut down. In fact, the work and planning should begin right away.
For that reason I am calling on our federal, state and local politicians as well as concerned and interested community members to support this concept. I have talked to Assemblyman Fred Thiele, Legislator Jay Schneiderman and Supervisor Scott Russell about this already. All of who are very interested in the concept. The conversion of Plum Island to an alternative energy research facility would give this beautiful and once pristine island a positive mission for the first time since 1947, and benefit current and future generations of Eastern Long Island residents both economically and environmentally for countless generations in the future.
If anyone is interested in helping me see this vision for Plum Island become a reality, please email [email protected] or call 631-495-6826. Plum Island as a “Green” energy center with a positive mission can become a reality, and again one that will benefit the East End, Southeastern Connecticut and even parts of Rhode Island in many ways. Certainly much more than a golf course or high end housing development would, or a piece of land that some environmental group uses to grow its own internal bureaucracy. After contaminating Plum Island, causing Lyme Disease and West Nile Virus we owe it to future generations of Eastern Long Islander’s and SE Connecticut residents to make up for the terrible mistakes of the past. An alternative energy facility would do that.
