The Defense Department’s troubled effort to neutralize its
stock of chemical weapons is facing more turmoil, caused in part
by homeland security considerations, according to officials at a
recent congressional hearing.
The military, already decades behind schedule and tens of billions
dollars above budget, is facing sharp criticism over its choice
of methods in neutralizing chemical agents, the decision to use
off-site facilities and its plan to dump sanitized waste from the
process into the Delaware River.
“I understand past delays have been caused by modified destruction
rates, new environmental regulations, worse-than-expected stockpile
conditions and unanticipated emergency preparedness requirements,”
said Rep. Marty Meehan, D-Mass., ranking minority member on the
subcommittee on terrorism and unconventional threats of the House
Armed Services Committee. “But I also know some of the delay
has been self-imposed by the Defense Department.”
With security priorities changing after September 2001, the Pentagon
decided to accelerate the breakdown of pure chemical agents, said
Dale Klein, assistant to the secretary of defense for nuclear, chemical
and biological programs.
That refocusing entailed a shift in funding away from building
new facilities in Pueblo, Colo., and Bluegrass, Ky., in favor of
getting work done at the existing plants in Utah, Alabama, Oregon,
Hawaii and Arkansas, and starting operations in Indiana.
“If you’re asking if we know how we’re going
to proceed, we don’t,” Klein responded to questions
about Pueblo’s future from Rep. Joel Hefley, R-Colo. “I
understand the frustration. We have it, too.”
Klein listed the program’s achievements, including the strong
safety records of the plants, the operation of six chemical weapons
sites by the middle of this year and the destruction of 36 percent
of the stockpile. By March, 11.2 tons of chemical agents in the
arsenal had been destroyed. In April, the facility at Pine Bluff,
Ark., began dismantling sarin-tipped warheads.
Driven by requirements of the Chemical Weapons Convention Treaty,
the program to break down the chemical weapons stockpile began in
1986. Projections pictured a $2 billion, 10-year effort. Current
estimates, however, place the cost of a worst-case scenario at about
$35 billion, with a timeline that extends past 2020.
Major treaty milestones have been missed, and although the United
States has destroyed more chemical weapons than all other signers
combined, by 2004 only 14 percent of chemical weapons had been neutralized
worldwide, which is far short of the 45 percent worldwide goal.
The entire arsenal is supposed to be dismantled by April 2007—a
goal that subcommittee chairman Jim Saxton, R-N.J., said would not
be met.
There has been frequent turnover in the program’s leadership,
and Claude Bolton, assistant secretary of the army for acquisition,
logistics and technology, told Congress the job is a hot potato.
“Frankly, I didn’t want it,” he said. “Too
many moving parts.”
He also lamented that the Army and Pentagon office are responsible
for different parts of the effort, making some cost reductions difficult:
“I can’t tell you how many times I’ve bit my lip,
knowing what I would do if we had the whole program.”
Bolton said that costly lessons, learned in earlier disposal facilities,
would make opening the remaining two faster and cheaper. Also, more
attention could be paid to increasing the lagging pace. “Having
plants up and running, we can now concentrate on driving times down,”
Bolton said.
But one major goal for the Army’s program, opening a nerve
gas (VX) disposal site at Newport, Ind., has drawn fire over its
operational plans, which involve a new technique for neutralizing
nerve gas.
Choices for disposal were driven by the need to defuse the nerve
gas stockpile as quickly as possible, reflecting the post 9/11 mindset
of the Pentagon, officials told Congress. “We had to take
a step back and get those agents out of those communities,”
said Mike Parker, director of the Army’s Chemical Material
Agency.
Initially, the choice was to incinerate or neutralize the lethal
chemicals. Neutralization is easier to perform on-site, given prohibitions
on shipping chemical weapons inside the U.S. What that process leaves
behind, a slightly caustic material called hydrolysate, also needs
to be sanitized. For that, the Army decided to use a combination
of chemical and biological methods that would prepare the caustic
material for a safe release into the Delaware River. The material
would be shipped to a DuPont-owned facility in New Jersey for final
treatment.
Infusing the river with hydrolysate is dependent on a review of
the Centers for Disease Control, which, in turn, is subject to scrutiny
by the Environmental Protection Agency. A number of problems have
clouded this process, including concerns that chemical stabilizers
added to the nerve gas to maintain potency will interfere with the
neutralization of the lethal agent.
“This initially will require smaller portions of VX being
treated per batch than was originally designed, 8 percent versus
32 percent,” said Thomas Sinks, acting director of the CDC’s
National Center for Environmental Health. “Moreover, for one
type of stabilizer…the Army has not yet presented a destruction
process to the CDC.”
The CDC also said that, based on current information provided by
DuPont and the Pentagon, there was a chance that traces of the VX
still could be present in the hydrolysate—enough so to harm
the river’s ecosystem.
EPA is not ready to give its blessing to the plan, either. The
agency’s position is that “DuPont has not demonstrated
that the disposal of material as presented in the ecological risk
assessment is acceptable.”
More studies on these issues are being conducted and reviewed,
and Army planners said they are hopeful that new techniques and
information will convince the CDC and EPA of the plan’s feasibility,
Bolton said.
Even though the river dumping studies are not completed, plans
are being drawn to begin breaking down the VX gas even without a
concrete plan for disposal. The neutralized hydrolysate will be
stored in secure containers until the government agencies agree
on a method for disposal.
“None of us were here when we made these weapons, and very
few of us were here when we signed a piece of paper with the rest
of the world to get rid of them,” Bolton told the subcommittee
members. “But this nation has an obligation to get rid of
them. If it costs more money, it costs more money. My job is to
do it safely.”