I am a journalist at a newspaper in the UK called the Whitley Bay News Guardian. I am working on a story at the moment about a clean-up contract that was awarded to a company based near Whitley Bay to strip down old army waste materials to remove from the Kiritimati.
The work is being paid for by the UK Ministry of Defence, but as I took a look at the details I realised all of the military activity took place well over 40 years ago... this to me seems like a very long time for our nation to have such a quantity of waste material left on the island.

I was wondering if you would be aware of, or able to put me in touch with someone who could comment on, the waste material caused by British military and whether it had caused problems for the islanders. The company (Safety and Ecology Corporation) also mention that the project will present training and employment opportunities for the local island population, would anyone be able to comment on whether this was the case?

By coincidence I have previously done a story on the health/ compensation situation of veterans and their families who were there during the Grapple testing of 57,58, and I would also be interested to hear how the test programme has effected the people on the island since.


Ben Garside, UK.
(e-mail: ben.garside@northeast-press.co.uk)

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