Press Statement from Nher Sagum
International Coordinator, Arc Ecology
December 3, 2024

Contact: Nher Sagum, phone 415-495-1786

My name is Nher Sagum. I am the international campaign coordinator for Arc Ecology. I am a civil engineer, working with an organization with nearly twenty years of experience evaluating and redressing the environmental and toxic impacts of military facilities and activities. Over the last decade, Arc Ecology has brought over a dozen successful lawsuits against the federal government forcing it to comply with the laws Congress has passed to protect the health and lives of the American people from the toxins, hazardous materials and radiological contaminants polluting its military bases and resulting from its industrial and training activities. As a result, I am quite familiar with the environmental impacts of the military.

I am also a Philippine National, born and raised in the community adjacent to the former Clark Air Force Base. My family still lives in the neighborhoods, or barangay as we say, just over the fence line from the highly polluted former American Air Force Base.

I am also the mother of a beautiful two-year-old girl. My worst fear as a mother is to find out that my young child has been afflicted with a serious illness.

But it saddens me to report that this is the experience of many mothers around the Clark and Subic Bay communities.

I know the parents of many of the children pictured behind us. I was there when this child, Crizel, died. I can’t begin to describe the pain, the sadness and the suffering that my communities is experiencing.

How did this situation come about?

It came about because the government of this country under the leadership of then Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney, decided that it was simply too expensive to clean the toxic contamination left behind by nearly 100 years of American use of the lands encompassed by Clark and Subic.

Worse, the United States made the decision to not even inform the Philippine government about the possible extent of the contamination. Even while both governments were negotiating the terms of the closure of the American bases.

So when refugees from the eruption of Mount Pinatubo in 1992, sought shelter on Clark Air Force Base, they had no way of knowing they were leaving the fire for the frying pan. They had no way of knowing that the section of the base they would be occupying was a former industrial motor pool responsible for the maintenance of trucks, jeeps and other vehicles. These families, more than 2,000 in all, had no way of knowing that the shallow wells they were digging to tap the waters of life, were actually inviting death and illness into their makeshift homes. That is because the wells they dug were drawing from aquifers that were heavily polluted by leaking crankcases, engine washdowns, oil changes, camouflage paint, and leaking gas pumps. Aquifers polluted with solvents, paints, metals, and petroleum products.

They also had no way of knowing, as the years went by, almost a decade all totaled, why their children were getting sick, why the adults were afflicted with gastroenteritis, cancers, spontaneous abortions and still births, and why their babies started to die.

In 1994, we the people of Clark and Subic started to ask the United States government about the conditions of these former bases. With the help of our friends in the United States like Arc Ecology and FACES, we began to uncover the similarities between Superfund level bases in America and those military bases that the US had abandoned in the Philippines. What we asked for most of all was the right to know what was going on with our environment, and with our health. What we wanted was for the United States to do the right thing. To give us the information we needed to understand the pollution problem, its sources and remedies.

Instead we got nothing. Except for a couple of boxes full of poorly constructed and uninformative reports, the United States turned its back on us. Even as recently as last year, even though since 1994, the entire world has become aware of the environmental and human health implications of the industrial and training activities that occur on military bases; the United States government ignored the suffering of the Filipino people. Even though our children from Clark and in surrounding communities were beginning to die, the military ignored our petitions.

That is why we collectively and I individually are here today. We are bringing our case to the United States courts in hopes that justice will be served at last here. Like the long established principle here in America, Filipinos also have the right to know what is poisoning us. The United States has the legal responsibility to tell us. We are here today in the pursuit of justice.

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