Pentagon officials spent more than $20 million on incinerators that were never touched while U.S. personnel on the ground in Afghanistan continued to burn trash from their military bases in open fires, causing health problems for both service members and Afghan civilians in the vicinities.
Even though the Department of Defense knew of the dangers that open garbage fires posed, it was slow to issue rules prohibiting the practice and didn’t always follow them when it eventually did, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction said in a report made public Thursday.
“Given the fact that DOD has been aware for many years of the significant health risks associated with open-air burn pits, it is indefensible that U.S. military personnel, who are already at risk of serious injury and death when fighting the enemy, were put at further risk from the potentially harmful emissions from the use of open-air burn pits,” the special inspector general said.
Military service members have returned home with health problems as a result of breathing the smoke from solid waste fires. Defense officials pointed to the unpredictable nature of combat zones as a reason why resource planning is difficult. They said environmental planning often takes a back seat to security concerns and other logistical pressures.
Items like plastics, tires and batteries were burned in open pits where the fumes could drift into areas where U.S. military personnel lived. The Pentagon issued rules in 2009 that required larger and more permanent bases to scale back their dependence on open-pit fires to dispose of solid waste and seek alternative methods.
The most common alternative to fire pits became incinerators, which collectively cost the Defense Department nearly $82 million to build. But poor planning and a lack of accountability caused some of the incinerators to go unused, wasting millions.
For example at Camp Leatherneck, a former key U.S. military base that has since been transferred to the control of Afghan armed forces, a pair of incinerators weren’t used because defense officials had never awarded a contract to operate and maintain them. Instead, after spending the money to build the incinerators, the Pentagon decided to award a contract worth more than $1 million to remove waste from a landfill — a solution that could have eliminated the need for the two incinerators in the first place.
Another base near the Pakistan border purchased incinerators without fully considering the fact that the light from the machinery would create a target for rocket fire if they operated at night. Officials there opted to continue burning waste. Still another military installation paid contractors millions for incinerators that were flawed and inoperable.
The special inspector general said it uncovered multiple instances of contractors being paid for work that was never completed. What’s more, the lack of accountability among defense contractors extended far beyond incinerators, the watchdog warned.
Between July 2009 and December 2014, SIGAR issued dozens of reports that exposed “a common theme … that contractors did not deliver according to the contract requirements but were still paid the full contract amount and released without further obligation.”
“U.S. taxpayers deserve better than what they received for the money spent on incinerators in Afghanistan,” the special inspector general said.
