Jobs Not Nuclear Bombs! Kansas City Residents Oppose New Weapons Plant
Margaret Swink is the Communications Director of Ploughshares Fund, a global security foundation. Ploughshares Fund provides support to the Kansas City Physicians for Social Responsibility, a member group of the Kansas City Peace Planters.
Over 150 people have already died and more are sick from working at the nation’s leading manufacturer of nuclear weapons parts in Kansas City, MO. But instead of cleaning up the plant, run by Honeywell for the National Nuclear Security Administration, Kansas City is planning to rebuild and expand the facility. It will create new jobs, they claim, in an economy that badly needs them.
Many in Kansas City, however, believe that jobs building nuclear bombs aren’t the jobs they need to rebuild the local economy. Instead, they’ve created a proposal to convert the bomb factory into a wind energy plant, building on the area’s natural wind resources to create green-collar jobs that will last long into the future.
The plans for the new plant are being financed by a city municipal bond, and incentivized by millions of dollars in city tax incentives to Honeywell. The financial burden this imposes on the city should mean that the community has the right to choose what they want the plant to be used for, argues the Kansas City Peace Planters, the leading group opposing the plant. They’ve gathered almost 5,000 signatures asking the City Council to put the issue on November’s ballot, allowing the community to choose between building a bomb facility and building alternative energy components, including high-voltage power lines, turbines and windmills.
“Kansas could be to wind what Saudi Arabia is to oil,” said Ann Suellentrop, a local nurse and Peace Planters member, to the Kansas City Star.
Once the plant is built and operational, the toxic nature of nuclear weapons manufacturing would require extensive cleaning of the facility, making the bar to convert the facility to any other use much higher.
Which makes building the plant all the more debatable. As President Obama moves the country further down the path towards a world without nuclear weapons, nuclear weapons parts are likely to become less in demand. “It’s a dying industry,” says Suellentrop.” It’s a 20th century dinosaur.”
If that happens, the Kansas City plant, already considered redundant by many experts, would likely be shuttered within the next few decades, leaving the city with a large financial, environmental and health burden, but no jobs to show for it.
Kansas City residents deserve to be able to vote on this issue. Sign the Peace Planter’s petition asking the City Council to put the Honeywell plant on the ballot in November. Or, if you’re in the area, go to the City Council hearing on June 16th.
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Margaret Swink
writes about forests, climate and why saving rainforests is still just as sexy as you remember it from 1989.
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