The United States will likely fail to meet a 2007 deadline to destroy
its entire stockpile of chemical weapons. Nevertheless, Army officials
remain optimistic about the future of the demilitarization program—which
in recent years has been plagued by delays, cost overruns and opposition
by environmental and public-safety advocacy groups.
Up until a few years ago, the focus of the U.S. chemical demilitarization
program was to ensure the entire stockpile of more than 31,000 tons
of bulk agents and munitions be destroyed by April 29, 2007—exactly
a decade from the day the United States ratified the Chemical Weapons
Convention.
But mounting criticism from local governments, lawmakers and advocacy
organizations about the safety of the Army’s incinerators
prompted program officials to reevaluate priorities. They decided
that, even though they wanted to obliterate the stockpile as quickly
as possible, they also needed to satisfy public-safety and environmental
concerns about the methods of destruction.
“We are still working to meet the 2007 goal,” said
James Bacon, the Army’s program manager for chemical demilitarization.
“We are looking at methods to accelerate destruction, where
appropriate,” he said in an interview. However, he added,
“Our highest priority is the safety of the public, the workers
[performing the destruction] and the environment.”
So far, the United States has destroyed about 8,000 tons of chemical
weapons. According to Bacon, “That surpasses our immediate
treaty goal of 20 percent [of the stockpile] by April 2002.”
Of the nine chemical-weapon sites where the Army was to set up
demilitarization operations, there are still two where the work
has not even started yet, because federal, state and local officials
have not agreed on what destruction method they should use.
The reason these two depots—located in Pueblo, Colo. and
in Blue Grass, Ky.—have lagged behind is that Congress passed
legislation in 1997 that directed the Army to evaluate alternative
technologies to incineration.
There are incinerators currently operating in Tooele, Utah, and
Anniston, Ala. The Army is building one in Umatilla, Oregon, and
recently began dismantling an incineration facility in Johnston
Island (located in the Central Pacific), which was used to destroy
about 2,000 tons of chemical weapons.
It appears inevitable that Pueblo and Blue Grass will fail to meet
the 2007 goal. “Our schedule extends beyond that, in some
of our sites,” said Bacon. Depending on how long it takes
to build destruction facilities at the two depots, it could well
be 2010 or 2012 before those stockpiles are destroyed.
To obtain an extension beyond 2007, the United States must file
a request by April 29, 2006. Officials from the Organization for
the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons would then determine whether
to extend the deadline by five years. A decision to seek an extension
would come from national authorities, not from the Army, Bacon noted.
“It’s a national security policy issue.”
Bacon, who is scheduled to retire this month, reports to Mario
Fiori, assistant secretary of the Army for installations and environment.
Bacon stressed that he is not leaving the government, because this
program “is too hard,” but because he wishes to retire
to his hometown in Arkansas, after 42 years of public service.
The current chain of command was implemented on December 12, 2001.
Before that, Bacon’s superior was the assistant secretary
of the Army for acquisition, logistics and technology.
Bacon said the reason for the change was to consolidate different
functions of the demilitarization program under one office, given
that Fiori already had responsibility for the emergency preparedness
of the chemical depots. Although Bacon did not mention any cost
overruns as a reason for the switch in leadership, it seemed clear
to observers that the Army had to make a management change in the
program, after the Pentagon’s Defense Acquisition Board concluded
that the Army’s budget estimates for the chemical demilitarization
effort were $9 billion short.
Congress created the office of the program manager for chemical
demilitarization in 1985. At the time, the Army had pegged the cost
of the demilitarization program at approximately $15 billion. Last
summer, the DAB revised that estimate to $24 billion, “to
cover the risks of future increases,” said Bacon. The $24
billion would pay for the destruction of the 31,000-ton stockpile
(ready-to-use weapons) as well as for the non-stockpile items. These
include former production facilities and recovered unexploded chemical
munitions produced for World War I. The non-stockpile funds also
cover emergency preparedness programs for the storage of those weapons
until they are destroyed. Non-stockpile chemical weapons are not
restricted to the Army’s eight chemical depots. Thirty-eight
states have non-stockpile items.
After September 11, the Defense Department tightened security procedures
at the chemical depots and added more guards at each facility. The
cost of the additional security was not part of the $9 billion increase
to the Army’s demilitarization budget blueprint.
More than 60 percent of the U.S. chemical stockpile consists of
blister and nerve agents stored in one-ton bulk containers. The
rest of the stockpile is in the form of fully assembled munitions.
Status of Facilities
The most successful demilitarization operation so far has been the
Johnston Atoll Chemical Agent Disposal System (JACADS) site, located
in the Central Pacific on Johnston Island, a one-square mile atoll
825 miles from Honolulu. The United States began storing chemical
weapons there in 1971, when the Army transferred munitions from
Okinawa, Japan. Additional munitions were shipped from West Germany
and the Solomon Islands.
The JACADS plant opened in 1990 and recently completed the incineration
of 2,031 tons—6.4 percent of the U.S. stockpile—of chemical
weapons stored there. The facility will not be totally closed for
another two to three years.
The original stockpile at JACADS included 43,660 mortar shells,
72,242 rockets, over 275,000 projectiles, 13,300 land mines and
200 one-ton containers. The JACADS contractor is the Washington
Demilitarization Company.
The incinerator now in operation at the Tooele facility—near
the Deseret Chemical depot—will dispose of 13,616 tons of
chemical agents, or approximately 44.5 percent of the nation’s
stockpile. The facility was built by EG&G Defense Materials
Inc.
The chemical-scrapping efforts at Tooele have not lacked critics.
About a year ago, between 18 and 36 milligrams of sarin nerve gas
leaked from the main smokestack at the Tooele facility, during the
decommissioning of a batch of M56 rocket warheads. The Centers for
Disease Control concluded that the release posed no threat to human
health or the environment and Army officials maintain that the design
and procedural errors that led to the accidental release have been
rectified. The Chemical Weapons Working Group, an anti-incineration
advocacy group, asserts that the incineration process is harmful
to the environment and jeopardizes public health. A spokesman for
CWWG said that there have been more than a dozen occasions when
nerve agents have escaped from the stacks of the Army’s incinerators.
“There is concern in the communities surrounding the storage
sites about the chronic emissions of other toxins resulting from
burning these munitions,” the spokesman said. “Among
the identified substances released during incineration operations
are PCBs, dioxins, mercury, lead and arsenic.”
The Army, however, disputes such claims. The service’s view
is that incineration is safe and that the bigger risk is to keep
thousands of tons of chemical weapons around. According to observers,
the Army in many ways created its own public-relations problems
by failing to bring the local communities into the process earlier
on. Once the Army realized it was not getting the support it needed,
it was too late to turn the incineration opponents around, even
though the service spent more than a billion dollars on outreach
efforts during the past several years.
Currently, there are international inspectors working at Tooele.
Employed by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons,
these inspectors conduct a standard oversight program mandated by
the Chemical Weapons Convention.
The Army announced last month that the largest stockpile of sarin
(or GB) nerve gas in the United States was destroyed at Tooele.
The incineration of more than 12 million pounds of sarin began at
Tooele in 1996. The stockpile included more than 900,000 individual
munitions.
EG&G also built an incineration facility at the Anniston Depot,
in Alabama. The Army tested the incinerator last month for the first
time. This is the first facility in operation that is located in
a highly populated area. More than 72,000 people live within about
9 miles of Anniston, where bunkers hold 2,254 tons of rockets, artillery
shells, land mines and bulk containers of chemical weapons. The
Army plans to start incinerating nerve agents at Anniston in September.
Meanwhile, Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman has filed suit to block disposal
of real nerve agents at Anniston, unless the federal government
provides $40.5 million for emergency response equipment and gear.
In an attempt to settle the lawsuit, the Army offered to buy $8
million worth of protective masks for 35,000 area residents.
There are facilities under construction today at three other chemical
depots: Umatilla, Pine Bluff and Newport.
The Umatilla incinerator first broke ground in 1997. It was designed
to destroy 3,717 tons, or 12 percent, of the U.S. stockpile. Umatilla
stores 120,600 rockets, projectiles, bombs and mines. Even though
the incinerator is nearly complete, last month, the Army recommended
that the mustard gas at Umatilla be destroyed using a water-based
neutralization system, in order to expedite the demilitarization
process. At press time, Oregon officials were considering the proposal.
Construction of the Pine Bluff incinerator, in Arkansas, began
in early 1999. Built by the Washington Demilitarization Company,
it is scheduled to begin operations in 2003. Pine Bluff stores 3,850
tons, or 12.3 percent, of the stockpile. This includes 123,093 rockets,
warheads, mines and one-ton containers.
At the Newport Chemical Depot, located 70 miles west of Indianapolis,
the Parsons Infrastructure & Technology Group Inc. is building
a facility that will destroy bulk VX agent via neutralization methods,
rather than incineration. In 1999, Congress appropriated $61.2 million
for this project.
The neutralization technology is called caustic chemical treatment
and super critical water oxidation. The chemical agent will be neutralized
using a water and sodium hydroxide solution—leaving three
bi-products, carbon monoxide, water and various types of salt. The
operation could start as early as 2004. Newport stores 1,269 tons
of VX nerve agent in 1,690 one-ton containers.
The stockpile in Aberdeen—in the form of one-ton containers
of mustard gas—also will undergo a neutralization treatment,
using a new three-step process: draining the agent from the ton
containers, neutralizing the mustard and shipping the non-agent
process wastes to a commercial biological treatment facility. Bechtel
is the contractor responsible for the Aberdeen facility.
At Pueblo, the Army recently proposed building a $1 billion facility,
where 2,600 tons of mustard gas inside 780,000 projectiles would
be destroyed via a water-based neutralization process. The community
adamantly had opposed incineration.
No specific destruction method has yet been selected for Blue Grass,
where 523 tons of chemical weapons are stored. But it is likely
to be some type of neutralization. One option being considered is
a recycling facility, designed by Eco Logic Inc., based in Canada.
The company’s technology would convert on-site, hazardous
waste and contaminated material into reusable or disposable products.