3 July 2026 à 17h19
HundredsHundreds of rusty oil drums, car batteries, discarded pipes, cables, and shattered asbestos sheets lie in piles along the coast, as far as the eye can see. The contrast with the crystal-blue icebergs slowly gliding by in the background is striking.
Storch Lund, 69, points towards the landscape. “All of this is American debris,” he explains. We are in Narsarsuaq in southern Greenland, the site of the US’s largest base in Greenland during World War II. A small airport with a nearby town, where thousands of American soldiers moved in after the base was established in 1941.
Storch Lund has lived in the town for more than 50 years and knows every hill and gravel path in the area. Including the so-called ‘dump’ near the fjord, a few hundred meters from the runway. Here, tonnes of waste are scattered across several hectares along the shoreline. Abandoned in the light-green river of meltwater that flows into the fjord. In several places, oil drums and wreckage lie in layers metres high. In other places, it has been buried.
Drone footage showing one of the coastal sites of abandoned US military waste, here notably including rusting barrels of fuel, and contaminated pools. © Vidéo Martin Lehmann / Politiken
“You can see that they’ve pushed it out toward the water. If you walk along the beach, you can see just how much pollution there is,” says Lund. As a boy, he played among wreckage, solidified tar, and asbestos sheets. Today, he views the pollution differently. “It’s a real mess,” he says.
He fears that the fjord has also been contaminated. “For many, many years, oil seeped into the water. A number of airplanes have been sunk out in the fjord,” says Lund, a trained mechanic who previously served as airport manager in Narsarsuaq for more than 20 years.
The Americans left the military base in Narsarsuaq in 1958 – without cleaning up. Now they want to return.
The United States’ interest in Greenland has grown – and faded again – several times throughout history. During World War II and the Cold War, the United States operated at least 36 bases and military installations in Greenland.
Many former US bases and sites have never been thoroughly investigated for environmental contamination – including some of the largest, such as Narsarsuaq and Pituffik.
Today, the Americans only have the large Pituffik base in northern Greenland. But intense diplomatic negotiations are currently underway between the US, Denmark, and Greenland, with the US government seeking to reopen several bases. A spokesperson for the US Department of Defense has specifically identified Narsarsuaq and Kangerlussuaq as bases the US wishes to return to.
As dramatic background noise, US President Donald Trump has long threatened to take over the world’s largest island. As recently as late June, Trump’s special envoy to Greenland, Jeff Landry, posted a message about Greenland in which he threateningly claimed that the US could become one state richer by next year.
Politiken travelled to Greenland to investigate how the US left behind its many former bases. Here, we have seen the pollution with our own eyes.
Over the years, articles have covered American legacies in Greenland, but Politiken is the first media outlet to map the pollution from US bases using several thousand pages of information obtained through freedom of information requests for environmental studies and documents from Danish and Greenlandic authorities.
Several of the environmental studies have not been made public before. Politiken’s investigation, which is shared with the European Investigative Collaborations network (EIC), reveals that the extent of the pollution is significant.
Several thousand metric tons of hazardous or contaminated waste have been left behind in the Greenlandic wilderness. Up to 100,000 rusted and corroded oil drums. Oil pollution from more than 400,000 litres of diesel fuel. Up to 24 million litres of low-level radioactive wastewater left beneath the ice sheet. Several metric tons of discarded batteries. Findings of the environmental toxin PCB at levels far exceeding regulatory limits, as well as heavy metals such as lead and cadmium, at nearly all of the at least 36 former US bases and military installations.
It’s a disgrace. And you can see it. This is how they treat our country.
Aleqa Hammond, chair of the Siumut party and former head of the Greenlandic government.
Many former US bases and sites have never been thoroughly investigated for environmental contamination – including some of the largest, such as Narsarsuaq and Pituffik.
Several prominent Greenlandic politicians are highly critical of the pollution left behind in Greenland. “It’s a disgrace. And you can see it. This is how they treat our country,” says Aleqa Hammond, chair of the Siumut party and former head of the Greenlandic government. She believes the US has gotten off “too easily.” “We haven’t seen any American involvement at all in cleaning up their own mess,” she says.
Bentiaraq Ottosen, a member of the Environment and Conservation Committee in the Greenlandic parliament, Inatsisartut, representing the Atassut party, agrees. “I think the Americans have shirked their responsibility. They’ve just left all kinds of junk behind and simply dumped cars and all sorts of other things into the natural environment,” he says.
Naaja Nathanielsen, a member of the Danish parliament, Folketinget, for the Greenlandic ruling party IA and former Greenlandic Minister of Industry, Trade, Natural Resources, and Justice, echoes the criticism and puts it into perspective: “We’ve tried to tell them, with varying degrees of success, that leaving stuff behind is a sign of disrespect. ‘You were allowed to come and be there.’ ‘You’ve enjoyed certain benefits from being in that position.’ ‘So, I also think the least you can do is clean up after yourself’,” says Naaja Nathanielsen.
We’ve tried to tell them, with varying degrees of success, that leaving stuff behind is a sign of disrespect,” says Danish MP Naaja Nathanielsen, a former Greenlandic minister for industry, trade, natural resources, and justice. © Photo Martin Lehmann / Politiken Enlarge image : Illustration 2
To understand how things have come to this, one must delve into history.
During World War II and the early days of the Cold War, the large island became a hotbed of interest for the US military. First, in the war against Nazi Germany and later as a resource depot, a testing ground for arctic warfare, and a forward outpost facing the communist Soviet Union.
From the outset, the terms of the American presence were negotiated in a complex game of defence politics in which the Americans did not always tell the Danish government the truth about their plans, and the Danish government often acted over the heads of the Greenlanders.
On April 9, 1941 – the first anniversary of the German occupation of Denmark – the Danish envoy to the United States, Henrik Kauffmann, acting as a self-appointed representative of the government in Copenhagen, single-handedly made a defence agreement with the United States that granted the US the right to establish airports and harbours as military bases in Greenland.
The Danish government subsequently dismissed Henrik Kauffmann, accused him of treason, and declared the agreement invalid, but the United States ignored this. The Americans began to establish bases throughout Greenland. After World War II, the United States saw itself as the protector of the free world and felt that this came with clear privileges.
Immediately after the war, the US government attempted – not for the first nor the last time – to purchase Greenland. They offered around 100 million dollars. The response from Copenhagen was a polite “no, thank you”.
In 1950, the Americans formulated an arctic strategy that called for mining uranium in Greenland, installing remote-controlled missiles with a range of 2,000 to 2,500 kilometres, and developing “means of transportation under the ice”. It was a strategy whose full scope the Danes would not learn about until decades later.
The following year, in 1951, the Danish and US governments entered into a defence agreement to jointly defend Greenland under the auspices of NATO. The US was allowed to establish “defence areas” in Greenland by agreement with Denmark. In those areas – “as well as the airspace above them and the adjacent waters” – the US could “adapt the area for military use”.
Article XI of the 1951 defence agreement contained the wording that has since served as the US argument for not having to clean up after itself: “It is understood that any areas or facilities made available to the Government of the United States of America under this Agreement need not be left in the condition in which they were at the time they were thus made available.”
Many of the American bases in Greenland were abandoned in a hurry, in whatever condition they happened to be in. This also applies to one of the US’s most controversial military installations in Greenland. About 225 kilometres east of the large Pituffik base in Greenland’s northeastern corner, the US established a science-fiction-like research station in 1959, featuring a small nuclear power plant beneath the ice sheet. They named it Camp Century.
The research station consisted of an extensive tunnel system with a 330-meter-long “main road” and more than 20 adjacent tunnels. The nuclear reactor supplied electricity and heat to the base and its 225 personnel. The Americans began construction without having received final approval from Copenhagen. The Danes were not told that the camp was intended as the first installation in a groundbreaking new Cold War project designed to enable the Americans to transport and launch nuclear-armed missiles from the base beneath the ice.
That strategy was later abandoned. The US removed the nuclear reactor a few years before leaving the base in 1966. But according to a 2016 report by an international team of researchers, up to 24 million litres of low-level radioactive wastewater, 9,000 metric tonnes of construction waste, and 200,000 litres of diesel fuel were left behind under the ice.
It remains there to this day.
Above crystal-blue waters, drone footage shows another site of abandoned, rusting barrels and machinery. © Vidéo Martin Lehmann / Politiken
Like other areas, Camp Century was abandoned without much involvement from the Greenlanders. “The construction of the bases and the way they were abandoned happened over the heads of the Greenlanders, who had absolutely no influence on what took place,” says Mikkel Myrup, area manager at the National Museum of Greenland.
Oil pollution, in particular, is a massive problem at the former US bases. This is especially true on the southern Greenlandic island of Simiutaq, which the Americans named Bluie West 3 and used as a manned weather and radio station. More than 50 years after the US left the base, the American debris still disfigures Greenland’s unique natural landscape.
It is estimated that there are approximately 10,000 cubic meters of oil-contaminated soil—or 10 million litres. And that’s just at the Simiutaq weather station.
Within minutes of arriving at the island’s old natural harbour, we are met with the sight of rusted oil drums, vehicles, and wreckage. Three different dumping sites filled with drums and scrap metal are scattered across the landscape – rolled down slopes and hidden away in valleys. Oil and tar have solidified in small streams trickling down toward the fjord.
There is also more recent trash. But the American remnants are unmistakable. They are also clearly identified in the environmental survey we have brought with us to the area. In samples taken by the engineering firm Niras, “severe oil contamination” has been found, consisting of so-called free-phase oil, which means the oil can move through the terrain.
In total, it is estimated that there are approximately 10,000 cubic meters of oil-contaminated soil – or 10 million litres. That is equivalent to four Olympic-sized swimming pools filled with oil-contaminated soil. That is equivalent to four Olympic-sized swimming pools filled with oil-contaminated soil. And that’s just at the Simiutaq weather station.
A scene of abandoned waste on Simiutaq island in southern Greenland, which the US named Bluie West 3 and used as a manned weather and radio station. It is estimated that there are approximately 10,000 cubic meters of oil-contaminated soil on the island. © Photo Martin Lehmann / Politiken Enlarge image : Illustration 4
Further up the Greenlandic west coast, and to just under 70 kilometres south of Nuuk, the US left behind at least 8,000 oil drums at the Marraq base – or Bluie West 4, as the Americans called it. Here, the engineering firm Carl Bro has also documented “severe oil contamination”, according to a public records request reviewed by Politiken.
“A conservative estimate of the total amount of diesel fuel that has contaminated the site is approximately 120,000 litres of diesel fuel or more,” the report states. The contamination was “so severe that a strong smell of oil could still be detected on site,” even though the contamination had occurred approximately 50 years earlier.
The oil contamination is most severe at the Ikkatteq base on Greenland’s largely inaccessible east coast. Here, the Americans have left tens of thousands of oil drums and old vehicles scattered across an area of more than 25,000 square meters. In several places, the drums have been stacked in two or three layers. Seven years ago, the Danish authorities launched a cleanup of the site.
As part of this effort, Mikkel Myrup from the National Museum of Greenland visited the remote base. “We could see that waste oil was leaking from many of the barrels. You could tell from the ground that it was contaminated with oil,” he says.
The Ikkatteq base, which served as an airstrip for the US Air Force, stored thousands of litres of fuel for stopover flights. “More than 100,000 drums were scattered across the landscape. Vehicles and buildings containing asbestos have collapsed. The base was abandoned without any form of cleanup,” says Myrup.
The area is popular among local mussels gatherers. In a single day, the consulting firm Cowi observed “15 small boats with mussel gatherers” off Ikkatteq. And this could be problematic, according to a Cowi report obtained by Politiken. “The substances detected in soil and water samples may pose a risk to marine life near the coast, particularly mussels in the fjord where the stream from the lake flows into the water. The mussels are collected and eaten by locals who sail to Ikkatteq,” the report states.
The fact that the pollution has spread to the marine environment near the bases is a confirmed problem in several locations – both at Marraq and at the base on Simiutaq, which Politiken has visited. Here, the engineering firm Niras also concludes that the oil pollution has caused a “significant impact on the marine area,” as “high levels of oil have been found in mussels and sediment”. Nevertheless, local Greenlandic mussels fishermen are not being warned about the pollution.
Asbestos from a former hospital lying on open ground
Another major environmental problem is the amount of asbestos left behind by the Americans. Environmental surveys of the American bases show that asbestos is present in abandoned buildings at nearly all of the bases that have been surveyed.
This is particularly evident in Narsarsuaq, the Americans’ main base during World War II. A few kilometres from the runway, the US built a 250-bed military hospital. The hospital remained relatively intact until 1972, when it burned down, and for years afterward sat as a pile of rubble in the landscape.
“I remember it myself. I saw the buildings when I was a little boy,” says Ole Guldager, who grew up in Narsarsuaq in the 1970s, holds a degree in archaeology from the University of Copenhagen, and runs the small Narsarsuaq Museum.
In the 1980s, the remains of the military hospital were bulldozed, but the asbestos sheets were left behind. Today, small white asbestos sheets lie scattered throughout the valley like crushed crispbread. Several locals describe how they have let their children play in the area for years, as they were unaware of the asbestos from the old hospital for decades.
We’re right in the path of the wind. Has this affected people who’ve lived here for 50 or 60 years? There’s no way to know. But I think we owe it to the people of Narsarsuaq to at least investigate this.
Ole Guldager, manager of the Narsarsuaq Museum.
A document obtained by Politiken through a freedom of information request shows that both the Danish and Greenlandic authorities are aware of the contamination. In 2019, a small group of researchers from Aarhus University was conducting fieldwork in Narsarsuaq. There, they observed how shattered asbestos sheets were scattered throughout the area. The researchers took samples back with them and determined shortly thereafter that the material was asbestos.
Ole Guldager was allowed to review the test results. “They were so serious that the university considered whether it was safe to have their students walking around in the area,” he says. The Danish researchers also informed the Chief Medical Officer in Greenland about the findings. “The Chief Medical Officer has asked the Greenlandic authorities to take measures to reduce the health risk,” according to meeting minutes reviewed by Politiken. But since then, it does not appear that much has happened.
Today, several residents of Narsarsuaq fear that the strong winds sweeping down the mountains are blowing asbestos from Hospitalsdalen over the village. “We’re right in the path of the wind. Has this affected people who’ve lived here for 50 or 60 years? There’s no way to know. But I think we owe it to the people of Narsarsuaq – and also to everyone who has lived here in the past – to at least investigate this. It would be unacceptable not to,” says Ole Guldager.
Decades of passing the buck
In the 1990s, the Americans had temporarily lost their focus on Greenland. Most of the bases had been abandoned. Only Thule Air Base – which was renamed Pituffik Space Base in April 2023 – remained under American control.
Greenlandic politicians raised concerns about the enormous amounts of waste the Americans had left behind, with tacit Danish approval. On March 13, 1991, then-foreign minister Uffe Ellemann-Jensen and his American counterpart signed an agreement in which the US promised to “remove or otherwise render harmless” all known hazardous substances – including waste oil, chemical solvents, asbestos, and PCBs – from military facilities that the Americans were vacating.
The Americans apparently reneged on that promise 11 years later. When the US prepared to leave and hand back the Dundas area, which is closely connected to the Pituffik base in northernmost Greenland, they refused to clean up after themselves, according to then-environment minister Svend Auken, because they would then be forced to do the same at their other bases around the world.
“They said, ‘If you pressure us, we won’t give you an inch of it,’” Svend Auken later told US weekly The Christian Science Monitor. Mikaela Engell of the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, who later became Denmark’s High Commissioner in Nuuk, was quoted as saying that there had been “a complete reversal of the US position on the environment between 1991 and 2003”.
A Pentagon spokesperson described it in the same publication as a sharing of the burden: with its military installations, the US had provided a defence for the free world – so others had to do their part by handling the cleanup.
The red dots indicate the sites of former US bases and other military installations. © Infographie Politiken
The legal situation was ambiguous. The 1991 agreement made it clear that it did not supersede the 1951 defence agreement, which stipulated that the US had no obligation to leave areas in Greenland in the same condition as when it took them over. It therefore became largely a political question of how firmly Denmark would insist that the US clean up the site.
When the Dundas Agreement was finally concluded in 2002 under then-prime minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen, Denmark ended up assuming full responsibility for the enormous quantities of US waste at Dundas.
Politiken asked the US Department of Defense and the Danish Ministry of the Environment whether they consider the 1991 agreement to be valid and in compliance. Neither the Danish nor the US authorities responded. The US Department of Defense (the Pentagon) has also not responded to questions about why the US will not contribute to the cost of the cleanup in Greenland, nor to any of Politiken’s other questions.
In the 2010s, prominent Greenlandic politicians stepped up their criticism of the US military’s legacy. This criticism contributed to the Danish government’s 2012 agreement with the Greenlandic Self-Government to clean up after the Danish military in Greenland. But the agreement made no mention of the US military waste.
Drone footage of scores of rusty barrels, some opened, after they were dumped down a hillside. © Vidéo Martin Lehmann / Politiken
In 2017, the then-Greenlandic foreign affairs minister, Vittus Qujaukitsoq, had had enough. Without the backing of the president of the Self-Government, he filed a complaint with the UN Human Rights Council, arguing that, in his view, Denmark was not taking sufficient responsibility for ensuring the cleanup of US military installations.
This was the first time Greenland had lodged a complaint against Denmark with the UN. The UN Special Rapporteur on Hazardous Waste, Baskut Tuncak, took the complaint seriously and subsequently concluded that “Denmark must identify and remove all military waste left behind in Greenland” which the Greenlandic people wish to have removed. In the same letter, the US was “strongly” urged to participate and contribute to the effort.
This did not change the US position, but the following year, the Danish government decided to allocate DKK 180 million (about 24 million euros) over six years to clean up selected US bases. A Danish-Greenlandic steering committee, led by the Ministry of the Environment, has been put in charge of the work, to which the US is not contributing. The funds from 2018 are far from being spent, and only a small portion of the bases have been cleaned up so far.
Politiken put a series of questions to the Danish environment minister, Maria Reumert Gjerding, regarding the US pollution and the Danish cleanup efforts. She did not respond to all of them.
In an email to Politiken, Gjerding writes:
“It is important that we adhere to the political agreement to clean up after the former US military presence in Greenland – and that we do it properly. We owe that to nature and the Greenlandic people. The work is underway, but conditions are difficult, and it takes time. I am monitoring the progress, and we have allocated funds to continue the task in close cooperation with Greenland.”
At a time when the US seeks to expand its military presence in Greenland and return to several of its old bases, many in the country are calling for measures to ensure the waste pollution scandal cannot be repeated. © Photo Martin Lehmann / Politiken Enlarge image : Illustration 7
But in hindsight, it seems “both wrong and inappropriate” that Denmark for so long failed to involve Greenland or to take responsibility for the Americans’ legacy, according to Kristian Hvidtfelt Nielsen, who heads the Center for Science Studies at Aarhus University and is co-author of a book on Camp Century.
He says this has left a fundamental mistrust in Greenland that is now getting in the way as Greenland and Denmark must jointly address the threats posed by Donald Trump. “It’s hard to say whether this could have been avoided, but it certainly isn’t helpful in the current situation that we’ve created that kind of conflict and created enemy stereotypes,” says Nielsen.
Now that the US wants to return to several of its old bases and expand its military presence in Greenland, many voices in the country are calling for measures to ensure that past mistakes are not repeated.
“Given what we know today about the past, it would be wise to consider whether there is a more appropriate way to proceed when entering into new agreements, so that we don’t end up facing the same problems again,” says Mikkel Myrup of the National Museum of Greenland.
“We do, after all, have the ‘polluter pays’ principle in Greenland. That should apply to everyone, including the US,” says Naaja Nathanielsen, Greenlandic Member of Parliament for the ruling IA party.
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This report was translated into English from Danish by Politiken. It also provided a French translation, which can be found here.
Editing by Graham Tearse