PRESS RELEASE

December 22, 2005

Fort Custer Earns Natural Resources Conservation Award

The Secretary of the Army, the Honorable Francis J. Harvey, announced today the award winners for environmental excellence during fiscal year 2005.

Five installations and four teams will receive the Secretary of the Army’s environmental award for their dedication to environmental stewardship while sustaining the Army’s mission.

Some of the noteworthy accomplishments credited to this year’s winners include programs that enhanced wildlife habitat while providing ideal training conditions; that safely and successfully cleaned-up contamination with significant cost savings; that preserved invaluable state cultural history; that created innovative pollution prevention approaches; and that fielded weapon systems built with both the Soldier and environmental safety in mind.

The winners of the FY 2005 Secretary of the Army Environmental Awards are:

• Fort Campbell, Ky. – Environmental Quality, Non-industrial Installation

• Fort Stewart and Hunter Army Airfield Sustainability and Management Team, Ga. – Environmental Quality, Team

• Fort Leonard Wood, Mo. – Cultural Resources Management, Installation

• Fort Lewis, Wash. – Environmental Restoration, Installation

• Sacramento District, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Pyramid Lake Torpedo and Bombing Range Site Restoration Project, Nev. – Environmental Restoration, Team

• Fort Custer Training Center, Michigan Army National Guard, Mich. – Natural Resources Conservation, Small Installation

• Minnesota Army National Guard Natural Resources Conservation Team, Minn. – Natural Resources Conservation, Team

• Tobyhanna Army Depot, Pa. – Pollution Prevention, Industrial Installation

• CO2 Cooling Development Team, Communications-Electronics RD&E Center, Fort Belvoir, Va. – Environmental Excellence in Weapon Systems Acquisition, Team

“The Army is committed to good environmental stewardship and the long term sustainability of its installations,” said Tad Davis, Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Army for the Environment, Safety and Occupational Health. “We can’t send our Soldiers out to engage the Global War on Terror without training them as they need to fight, but we don’t have to sacrifice the environment to provide that training. As these awardees so ably show, we use innovation, dedication, and hard work to balance readiness with environmental sustainability.”

Representatives from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency; the U.S. Bureau of Land Management; the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service; the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation; the National Conference of State Legislatures; environmental management office representatives from five states; and the Office of the Federal Environmental Executive served as judges on the award panels.

The Secretary of the Army Environmental Awards represent the highest honor in the field of environmental science conferred by the Army. Winners of the awards will go on to compete against the Air Force, the Navy and the Marine Corps for the Secretary of Defense’s Environmental Awards.

For details about the fiscal year 2005 Secretary of the Army Environmental Award’s recipients visit the U.S. Army Environmental Center’s Web site at http://aec.army.mil/.