for immediate release, Friday, January 12, 1996
TOOELE, UTAH, LOCAL GOVERNMENT CHANGES POSITION
TO OPPOSE ARMY'S CHEMICAL WEAPONS INCINERATION PERMITS;
COMMISSIONERS REBUFF ARMY CLAIM "THERE WAS NOT ONE DAMN
THING THEY COULD SAY OR DO THAT WOULD MAKE A DIFFERENCE"
The U.S. Army lost a major supporter of its plan to incinerate chemical weapons this
week when leaders of the Tooele, Utah, government called on state officials to reject
permits allowing burning of toxic agents to begin. Start-up of the Tooele incinerator
had been a lynch-pin in Army's plans to build seven similar facilities across the U.S.
Letters from the Tooele County Commission and Tooele County Department of Emergency
Management, read at a public hearing urged the Utah Department of Environmental
Quality to withhold approval of a "trial burn" because federal safety requirements had
not been met. The Army had hoped to start incineration of more than 20 million pounds
of chemical agents at the Tooele Army Depot later this winter.
Tooele local officials expressed anger about the Army's arrogance in the permitting
process. "It has been less than two years ago that a visiting Colonel looked one of our
haz-mat people in the eye and told him that the Army could do anything they wanted to
do," the letter from the Tooele County Commission charged. "There was not one damn
thing that they could say or do that would make any difference."
Long-time opponents of the Army's incineration program praised the actions of Tooele
local officials and suggested the change of position reflected an evolution of public
opinion. "The new opposition to issuing permits indicates the growing hostility to the
Army's expensive and dangerous incineration scheme," said Craig Williams,
national spokesperson for the Chemical Weapons Working Group. "In its rush to burn,
the Army continues to ignore health and safety concerns."
The critical statements from Tooele officials focussed on the Army's failure to develop a
plan to react to any leak of chemical agent from the incinerator. The letter from the
Department of Emergency Management called for denial of the permits on the ground
that the facility's "contingency plans . . . are inadequate in their anticipation of a large-
scale chemical accident incident."
Many local residents also spoke out at the hearing in opposition to the chemical
incinerator permits, raising concerns about the facility's environmental and public
health impacts. Several expressed anger that the lack of an Army emergency response
plan would force citizens of Tooele County to pay to protect themselves.
Meanwhile, a whistleblower protection hearing for the former chief safety officer at the
Tooele facility has been postponed until late March, due to the illness of the federal judge
assigned to the case.
Meanwhile, a whistleblower protection hearing for the former chief safety officer at the
Tooele facility has been postponed until late March, due to the illness of the federal judge
assigned to the case.
In that action, Steven Jones, a much-decorated career military inspector, claims he was
illegally terminated for reporting more than 3,000 health, safety and environmental
flaws at the plant, including the lack of an adequate emergency response plan.
The Army's program to incinerate the cold war stockpile of lethal chemical agents is
over a decade behind schedule and more than 600% over its initial budget with a current
projected cost of $12.3 billion. A growing number of experts, including some Army
researchers, agree that the military should abandon the incineration program and
pursue safer, more cost-effective alternative destruction approaches.
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