Post by L Roebuck on Aug 31, 2006 21:29:00 GMT -5
Residents fight potential plans for explosion
Government denies current ties to Indiana quarry
By Jessica Wolfe | Indiana Daily Student | Thursday, August 31, 2006
Activism by local politicians and community members might have deterred government plans to detonate 700 tons of military explosives in a southern Indiana quarry.
After a Nevada newspaper reported the Department of Defense was considering conducting the largest non-nuclear blast in U.S. history at a site it has tested before, like the quarry in Mitchell, Ind., the word spread and spurred residents to make sure the possibility never becomes reality in Indiana.
Just 45 minutes south of Bloomington, the Mitchell Crushed Stone quarry was a site of U.S. military testing without public knowledge in 2004 and 2005, The Associated Press reported this month.
The explosion under debate, tagged "Divine Strake," would test potential damage to deep-underground targets, a Department of Defense statement said.
The Department of Defense pulled its plans to conduct the blast in Nevada earlier this summer.
If conducted at the Mitchell quarry, though, the explosion would contaminate groundwater and damage the extensive limestone cave systems in the area, Bloomington resident and part-time scientist for Argonne National Laboratory Russell Boulding said Monday.
"What's being tried has never been done before," said Boulding, who signed a petition to stop the testing. "Words fail me in saying how insane it is."
Mitchell residents and groups opposed to the explosion — including Bloomington-based "Hoosiers Against Divine Strake" — have spent the last several weeks making phone calls to politicians and organizing their opposition to the explosion. After a press conference Monday in Mitchell, the city's mayor, Butch Chastain, received a letter from the vice president of Rogers Group, Inc., the company that owns and operates the quarry. According to Chastain, the letter said Rogers Group would not allow an explosion of that size in its quarry.
Full Article
Government denies current ties to Indiana quarry
By Jessica Wolfe | Indiana Daily Student | Thursday, August 31, 2006
Activism by local politicians and community members might have deterred government plans to detonate 700 tons of military explosives in a southern Indiana quarry.
After a Nevada newspaper reported the Department of Defense was considering conducting the largest non-nuclear blast in U.S. history at a site it has tested before, like the quarry in Mitchell, Ind., the word spread and spurred residents to make sure the possibility never becomes reality in Indiana.
Just 45 minutes south of Bloomington, the Mitchell Crushed Stone quarry was a site of U.S. military testing without public knowledge in 2004 and 2005, The Associated Press reported this month.
The explosion under debate, tagged "Divine Strake," would test potential damage to deep-underground targets, a Department of Defense statement said.
The Department of Defense pulled its plans to conduct the blast in Nevada earlier this summer.
If conducted at the Mitchell quarry, though, the explosion would contaminate groundwater and damage the extensive limestone cave systems in the area, Bloomington resident and part-time scientist for Argonne National Laboratory Russell Boulding said Monday.
"What's being tried has never been done before," said Boulding, who signed a petition to stop the testing. "Words fail me in saying how insane it is."
Mitchell residents and groups opposed to the explosion — including Bloomington-based "Hoosiers Against Divine Strake" — have spent the last several weeks making phone calls to politicians and organizing their opposition to the explosion. After a press conference Monday in Mitchell, the city's mayor, Butch Chastain, received a letter from the vice president of Rogers Group, Inc., the company that owns and operates the quarry. According to Chastain, the letter said Rogers Group would not allow an explosion of that size in its quarry.
Full Article