I 
112TH CONGRESS 
1ST SESSION H. R. 1645 
To construct a specialty hospital and toxins research center on the island 
of Vieques, Puerto Rico, and for other purposes. 
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 
APRIL 15, 2011 
Mr. ROTHMAN of New Jersey (for himself, Mr. PIERLUISI, Mr. THOMPSON of 
Mississippi, and Mr. GUTIERREZ) introduced the following bill; which was 
referred to the Committee on Natural Resources, and in addition to the 
Committees on Energy and Commerce and the Judiciary, for a period to 
be subsequently determined by the Speaker, in each case for consider-
ation of such provisions as fall within the jurisdiction of the committee 
concerned 
A BILL 
To construct a specialty hospital and toxins research center 
on the island of Vieques, Puerto Rico, and for other 
purposes. 
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representa-
tives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, 
SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE. 
This Act may be cited as the ‘‘Vieques Recovery and 
Development Act of 2011’’. 
SEC. 2. FINDINGS. 
The Congress finds the following: 
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(1) Vieques is an island municipality of Puerto 
Rico, measuring approximately 21 miles long by 4 
miles wide, and located approximately 8 miles east 
of the main island of Puerto Rico. 
(2) Vieques is home to nearly 10,000 United 
States citizens, about 65 percent of whom live below 
the Federal poverty line. 
(3) The average monthly unemployment rate in 
Vieques was 21.9 percent in 2009, 17.7 percent in 
2010, and 15.7 percent in January 2011. 
(4) Residents of Vieques are currently served by 
a single primary and urgent care facility, the Susana 
Centeno Family Health Center, and residents must 
travel off-island to obtain many essential medical 
services, including most types of emergency care. 
(5) The predominant means of transporting 
passengers and goods between Vieques and the main 
island of Puerto Rico is by ferry boat service, and 
over the years the efficacy of this service has fre-
quently been disrupted by launch delays and me-
chanical problems. 
(6) The United States Navy maintained a pres-
ence on the eastern and western portions of the is-
land of Vieques, Puerto Rico, for nearly 60 years 
and used parts of the island as a training range dur-
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ing those years, dropping over 80 million pounds of 
ordnance and employing virtually every type of am-
munition and ordnance available to the Navy since 
World War II. 
(7) Residents living on the areas expropriated 
by the Federal Government for the Navy’s use were 
required to relocate to the central portion of the is-
land. 
(8) According to records of the Federal Govern-
ment and testimony of Navy personnel, the island of 
Vieques, Puerto Rico, has high levels of heavy met-
als and has been exposed to chemical weapons and 
toxic chemicals, including napalm, agent orange, de-
pleted uranium, white phosphorous, arsenic, mer-
cury, lead, aluminum, cadmium, antimony, magne-
sium, TNT, PCBs, RDX, barium, cyanide, solvents, 
and pesticides. All of these weapons and chemicals 
have been deployed on the island of Vieques, Puerto 
Rico, in the interest of training for the defense of 
our Nation. 
(9) The Navy established the Vieques Naval 
Training Range in eastern Vieques, which consisted 
of two facilities: (1) the Atlantic Fleet Weapons 
Training Facility, which was used for ship-to-shore 
and aerial bombing exercises, and comprised a Live 
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Impact Area and a Secondary Impact Area; and (2) 
the Eastern Maneuver Area, which was used pri-
marily for ground-based training involving smaller 
munitions. 
(10) The Navy also established the Naval Am-
munition Support Detachment in western Vieques to 
store munitions used in its training in eastern 
Vieques and to dispose of obsolete or damaged muni-
tions. 
(11) In 2000, the Navy reported that it had 
used 1,862 tons of ordnance annually in training ex-
ercises on Vieques from 1983 to 1998. 
(12) In the National Defense Authorization Act 
for Fiscal Year 2001, Congress directed the Navy to 
close its facilities in western Vieques and to transfer 
approximately 4,000 acres of that property to the 
Municipality of Vieques, approximately 3,100 acres 
to the Department of the Interior, and approxi-
mately 800 acres to the Puerto Rico Conservation 
Trust. 
(13) In the National Defense Authorization Act 
for Fiscal Year 2002, Congress authorized the Navy 
to close its training facilities on eastern Vieques if 
equivalent training facilities were made available 
elsewhere and directed the Navy, upon closure, to 
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transfer the nearly 15,000 acres of that property to 
the Department of the Interior. 
(14) In January 2003, the Navy certified to 
Congress that alternative training sites had been 
identified and confirmed that training operations 
would cease on Vieques by May 2003. 
(15) The Navy continues to be responsible for 
administering and funding the cleanup of munitions 
and contamination that resulted from its past activi-
ties on Vieques, subject to oversight by the Environ-
mental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Puerto 
Rico Environmental Quality Board, an agency of the 
government of Puerto Rico. 
(16) Following the closure of the Navy’s facili-
ties in 2003, public concerns were raised as to how 
funding for the cleanup of Vieques would be 
prioritized among the hundreds of other contami-
nated military installations in the United States for 
which the Navy is responsible. 
(17) Factors motivating these concerns included 
the safety risks from explosives in munitions that 
had accumulated over decades of live-fire training, 
and the potential human health and ecological risks 
from contaminants that may have leached from mu-
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nitions and other hazardous wastes into the environ-
ment. 
(18) In February 2005, EPA listed Vieques on 
the National Priorities List (NPL) of the most haz-
ardous sites in the United States, elevating its pri-
ority for federally-funded cleanup. 
(19) The NPL site listing includes the former 
Vieques Naval Training Range in eastern Vieques 
and the former Naval Ammunition Support Detach-
ment in western Vieques, as well as off-shore areas 
where munitions may have entered the water during 
past training exercises. 
(20) As of August 2010, the Navy had recov-
ered and destroyed 34,642 live munitions on 
Vieques. 
(21) Through the end of Fiscal Year 2009, the 
Navy had spent a total of $120.4 million to support 
the cleanup of its former facilities on Vieques, and 
had estimated that an additional $269.9 million 
would be needed from Fiscal Year 2010 into the fu-
ture to complete all planned cleanup actions. 
(22) The Navy has estimated that remedial ac-
tions to clean up unexploded ordnance, other dis-
carded munitions, and munitions constituents will 
not be completed until Fiscal Year 2020, and has es-
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timated that the entire cleanup of Vieques will not 
be completed until Fiscal Year 2045. 
(23) Although cleanup efforts are underway on 
Vieques, island residents have continued to express 
concern about the health impacts from long-term ex-
posure to environmental contamination as a result of 
decades of Navy operations on Vieques. 
(24) In 2007, after exhausting their adminis-
trative remedies, over 7,000 residents of Vieques 
brought a lawsuit against the United States under 
the Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA), seeking mone-
tary compensation for damages to their health that 
they claimed were caused by exposure to contamina-
tion resulting from past Navy operations. 
(25) The residents of Vieques have based their 
tort claims on EPA-documented past violations by 
the Navy of Clean Water Act discharge permit re-
quirements and other environmental statutes; find-
ings by independent researchers who have attributed 
elevated levels of contaminants on Vieques to dec-
ades of Navy operations; insufficient notification by 
the Navy of the release of these contaminants into 
the environment; and higher rates of occurrence of 
certain diseases among residents of Vieques, includ-
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ing cancer, cirrhosis, hypertension, and diabetes, as 
reported by numerous researchers. 
(26) The residents of Vieques originally filed 
their claims in the United States District Court for 
the District of Columbia, which subsequently trans-
ferred those claims to the United States District 
Court for the District of Puerto Rico. 
(27) In July 2009, the United States filed a 
motion to dismiss the claims based on a lack of sub-
ject matter jurisdiction under the Federal Tort 
Claims Act (FTCA), asserting that the Navy’s train-
ing activities on Vieques fell within the Act’s ‘‘dis-
cretionary function exception’’, which is generally in-
tended to prevent the United States from being held 
liable for the performance of actions involved in car-
rying out the role of the Federal Government and 
which immunizes the United States for acts or omis-
sions of its employees that involve policy decisions, 
even when such decisions cause harm to United 
States Citizens. 
(28) In March 2010, a district court judge in 
the United States District Court for the District of 
Puerto Rico, in a brief sympathetic to the people of 
Vieques, nonetheless granted the United States’ mo-
tion to dismiss based on lack of subject matter juris-
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diction, without ruling on the merits of plaintiffs’ 
substantive claims. 
(29) Plaintiffs have appealed that decision to 
the United States Court of Appeals for the First 
Circuit, and such appeal is currently pending. 
(30) In a report published in November 2009, 
the Puerto Rico Cancer Registry, then a part of the 
Puerto Rico Department of Health, found elevated 
levels of various cancers among residents of Vieques 
relative to cancer levels in mainland Puerto Rico. 
(31) Numerous other non-Federal studies of 
Vieques in the last 2 decades have found elevated 
levels of contaminants in the hair samples of Vieques 
residents, as well as in the island’s soil, food supply, 
and water. 
(32) A 1999 study conducted by Dr. Colon de 
Jorge reported that 34 percent of the residents of 
the island of Vieques, Puerto Rico, have toxic levels 
of mercury in their blood stream, 55 percent are 
contaminated with lead, 69 percent are contami-
nated with arsenic, 69 percent are contaminated 
with cadmium, 90 percent are contaminated with 
aluminum, and 93 percent are contaminated with 
antimony. 
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(33) A February 2001 analysis by Carmen 
Ortiz Roque, MD., M.P.H., M.S. reported that the 
residents of the island of Vieques, Puerto Rico, when 
compared to the inhabitants of the main island of 
Puerto Rico, are suffering with 30 percent higher 
rates of cancer, 381 percent higher rates of hyper-
tension, 95 percent higher rates of cirrhosis of the 
liver, and 41 percent higher rates of diabetes. 
(34) Such analysis also reported that the infant 
mortality rate on the island of Vieques, Puerto Rico, 
when compared to infants born on the main island 
of Puerto Rico, is 25 percent higher. 
(35) The Agency for Toxic Substances and Dis-
ease Registry (ATSDR) conducted a series of Public 
Health Assessments on Vieques from 2001 through 
2003, examining the potential for human exposure 
to contaminants through the air, soil, drinking water 
supplies and groundwater, and consumption of fish 
and shellfish, and issued a finding of ‘‘No Apparent 
Public Health Hazard’’ for each of these pathways. 
(36) The ATSDR’s analytic methods and find-
ings with respect to Vieques have been subject to 
criticism. 
(37) Critics of ATSDR’s methods and findings 
include Dr. John P. Wargo, the Chair of the Yale 
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College Environmental Studies Program and an ex-
pert in assessing human exposure to hazardous sub-
stances. 
(38) Dr. Wargo, in his 2009 book entitled 
‘‘Green Intelligence: Creating Environments That 
Protect Human Health’’, expressed the view that the 
Federal Government has yet to conduct a ‘‘scientif-
ically defensible study’’ with respect to environ-
mental contamination on Vieques and its possible 
health effects on the island’s residents. 
(39) Various non-Federal researchers who have 
studied Vieques in recent years have concluded that 
environmental contamination levels are higher than 
the ATSDR has reported, that the potential health 
hazards are therefore likely to be greater overall 
than the ATSDR has found, and that there is a 
more definitive link between the Navy’s past activi-
ties and the various health problems that have been 
cited by the island’s residents. 
(40) In March 2009, the House Committee on 
Science and Technology’s Subcommittee on Inves-
tigations and Oversight held a hearing in which 
members of the Subcommittee questioned the 
ATSDR’s findings about Vieques, raising questions 
about the manner in which ATSDR conducted its 
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Public Health Assessments and the accuracy of the 
conclusions reached by the agency. 
(41) In the summer of 2009, ATSDR indicated 
that it would re-examine its prior findings in order 
to determine whether the available evidence revealed 
a greater risk of human exposure to contamination 
than previously understood. 
(42) In a November 2009 progress report, 
ATSDR announced that it expected to ‘‘change some 
of its earlier conclusions regarding the safety of en-
vironmental exposures on Vieques’’. 
(43) ATSDR further announced in its Novem-
ber 2009 progress report that it expected: to rec-
ommend biomonitoring to determine whether persons 
living on Vieques have been exposed to harmful 
chemicals, and, if so, at what levels those chemicals 
may be in their bodies; to work with health officials 
from Puerto Rico to conduct more in-depth evalua-
tion of health outcomes; to work with community 
members and health officials from Puerto Rico to 
issue science-based, precautionary recommendations 
to protect public health; and to work with partners 
in Puerto Rico’s health care community to encour-
age improved access to health care for residents of 
Vieques. 
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(44) In a February 2008 letter to the Governor 
of Puerto Rico, then-presidential candidate Barack 
Obama stated that his Administration would ‘‘closely 
monitor the health of the people of Vieques and pro-
mote appropriate remedies to health conditions 
caused by military activities conducted by the U.S. 
Navy on Vieques’’ and ‘‘work to evaluate and expand 
the existing land use plan for the former U.S. Navy 
lands to prioritize improving the lives of the Island’s 
residents and the sustainable economic development 
of the people of Vieques’’. 
(45) The March 2011 Report by the President’s 
Task Force on Puerto Rico’s Status stated that 
‘‘better health care facilities are an urgent need for 
the people of Vieques,’’ recommended that ‘‘HHS 
should work closely with the governments of Puerto 
Rico and Vieques to improve the quality of health 
care for the residents of Vieques,’’ and concluded 
that ‘‘a needs assessment should be completed to 
identify the most effective and efficient way to en-
sure that the people of Vieques receive the care, in-
cluding expertise in environmental medicine, that 
they need’’. 
(46) The March 2011 Report by the President’s 
Task Force on Puerto Rico’s Status further stated 
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