(Reprinted with permission of the Exchange Monitor. For more information on
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CHEM-BIO WEAPONS & DEFENSE MONITOR
Volume 3 No. 6
April 30, 2001

AT PUEBLO........................DUAL EIS's OK'D BY PENTAGON FOR RELEASE
But New Coalition of Citizen Groups Pushes for More Input

Acting Under Secretary for Acquisition and Technology David R. Oliver approved April 27 two draft environmental impact statements (EIS), one for covering destruction of the Pueblo Stockpile (PMCD) issued by the program manager for Chemical Demilitarization, and other from the program manager for Assembled Chemical Weapons Assessment (ACWA) addressing a pilot demonstration of an alternative technology. The paperwork now is in the Army's Office of Deputy Assistant Secretary for Environment Safety and Occupational Health, Ray Fatz, who is expected to forward it onto the Secretary of Army's Office for approval, after which they will both be released to the public. A PMCD spokesman reported that if all actions proceed on schedule the Federal Register notice will be published on May 11.

According to both ACWA and PMCD staff, both draft EISs will be open for comment for 45 days, not the 90 sought by a broad coalition of local citizen groups and national organizations.

Simultaneous Release A Victory for Locals

Though the simultaneous release of the two documents was a minor victory for local citizen groups, who had pushed for the joint action, they did not convince the Army to expand the comment period to 90 days, therefore they now have only 45 days to review both. But they have not given up. Over the past several months a formidable coalition of citizen groups including the Sierra Club, the Catholic Diocese of Pueblo, the Boone-Avandale Citizen's Alliance, Citizens for Clean Air, and the local chapters of the building trades and steel workers union has formed to fight the U.S. Army chemical demilitarization decisionmaking process on the selection of technology to destroy the Pueblo chemical agent stockpile. As described by Larry Howe-Kerr, an active coalition participant, who is the director of the Office of Social Justice which works under the Catholic Diocese of Pueblo's Human Development Commission, the glue that is binding all the groups is a "basic mistrust of the U.S. Army." Some of the groups, he said, like the Sierra Club, Boone-Avandale Citizen's Alliance, and the Citizen's for Clean Air, are adamantly opposed to deploying an incineration system at Pueblo, while others, including the Diocese, have not taken a position on a specific technology but are intent on making sure the program manager for chemical demilitization, working together with the program manager for the ACWA program, have established an open decisionmaking process on the technology selection for Pueblo.

According to Howe-Kerr, the coalition's immediate objective, having achieved dual release of the dual EIS's, is to:

- Extend the comment period to 90 days to allow for substantive public comment; and

- Make sure the Army establishes a transparent decisioninaking process on the selection of a technology to be deployed at Pueblo.

In early April, Howe-Kerr wrote Deputy Assistant Secretary Fatzrequesting that the Army adhere to three principles to ensure the NEPA process:

- Full and accurate information presented in away that the public is able to judge what is best for the community

- Sufficient notice and time allowed in the public comment period-90 days-to allow for full study of the information and due consideration of the views offered by the public; and

- A full public hearing with recording of a full consideration of comments from the public.

Fatz did not respond.

But Is There a Choice to Be Made?

Though opposition to incineration at Pueblo has been voiced for some time and has not been successful in winning over either all members of the congressional delegation or city and county officials, what has motivated this new coalition and brought on the very active involvement of the Catholic Church is the recent revelation of a memo of a year ago from the Army General Counsel's office arguing that the Army had no alternative but to select incineration for destruction of the Pueblo chemical weapons stockpile. The memo starts off asserting that "the fundamental cleft in the decisionmaking process for Pueblo is the differing hierarchy for the chemical demilitarization and the ACWA process," concluding that "there appears to be no organization within DoD that has both the familiarity and the cognizance over the entire spectrum of chemical demilitarization activities necessary to make an informed and impartial decision regarding Pueblo." The memo goes on to emphasize that the decision on destroying the Pueblo stockpile-the subject of the PMCD-Pueblo DEIS and that of pilot testing an ACWA technology at the site-the subject of the ACWA DEIS-are "two distinct decisions." As argued by memo author, Levator Northsworthy, Jr., deputy general counsel, "It would be improper ... to assume that a like-to-like comparison can be made in the near future regarding the effectiveness, safety and timeliness of destruction using ACWA technologies versus destruction using incineration.... It should surprise no one that the disparity of data between incineration and ACWA weigh heavily in favor of choosing incineration as the technology for destruction of the stockpile at Pueblo."

The memo further argues that:

An affirmative decision by [DoD] to pilot test an ACWA technology should not mean that the U.S. government has decided to gamble on the successful pilot testing of an ACWA technology at Pueblo. In other words, if only one facility is constructed at Pueblo, it should be a facility that the Army and DoD strongly believe can destroy the stockpile by the deadline established by the CWC. [Aside: But that deadline appears to be now a moving target with extensions already granted for Russia. This situation is fueling the opposition's push to deploy alternatives to incineration (see related story).]

It concludes with this warning:

The Army and DoD must not allow the decision regarding the technology to be used to destroy the stockpile at Pueblo to be subverted by petty politics or a desire to continue research and development of non-incineration technologies.