Rocky Mountain Arsenal in Colorado ca. 1960, photo courtesy of the National Parks Service

The environmental impact of war is often discussed in terms of the consequences of physical conflict and the deployment of weapons, but the process of preparing for war can be damaging to a country’s own environment as well. The compounds developed and stored on U.S. military bases, in depots, and in weapons development facilities can harm the people who work and live there without ever being deployed. Together, the various branches of the military are responsible for 87% of federally owned sites on the EPA’s national priorities list, which consists of contaminated sites deemed a risk to public health. The compounds involved range from jet fuel to explosives, from volatile organic compounds to heavy metals like arsenic, chromium, and lead, and even include radioactive residue. In some cases, cleanup efforts have been complicated by differences between the Department of Defense’s view of what contamination levels constitute an unnecessary risk to the public and local or federal EPA recommendations. Furthermore, because of the nature of the sites, the full extent of contamination is often only revealed to the public after the sites have been decommissioned. What happens to these bases once they are no longer useful to the military, and can their contamination ever be remediated? How can we ensure that efforts to keep the United States safe from external threats aren’t harming our domestic environment? Can a military operation ever really be considered “green”? Answering these questions will require integrating political interests, scientific data, and public health efforts in order to evaluate what national security means in the 21st century.