For immediate release: Monday, July 29, 1996

CHEMICAL WEAPONS LEAKAGE RATE NOT INCREASING; ARMY MISLED CONGRESS AND COMMUNITIES

NEW DATA SHOWS CHEMICAL WEAPONS STOCKPILES STABLE: LEAKAGE NOT SKYROCKETING AS PORTRAYED BY ARMY TO JUSTIFY "RUSH TO BURN"

Previously unpublished U.S. Army studies reveal that the nation's chemical weapons stockpile is
not leaking at an ever-increasing rate. Instead, new government statistics show that the number of
chemical leaks discovered annually has been relatively stable for the past fifteen years.

The data, obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request by the Salt Lake City newspaper,
the Deseret News, undermine the Army's claim that continued storage of the munitions is more
dangerous than incineration. The Army has relied heavily on that argument to defend its
controversial plan to build eight chemical weapons incinerators on the U.S. mainland.

According to the new Army data reported in the Deseret News, "an average of 175 new leaks were
found nationally from 1981 to 1995. The numbers found in the last three years were at or below
that level. In 1995, 175 were found. In 1994, there were 172 leakers. And in 1993, 126 were
discovered." The greatest number of leakers found in any year in the past decade and a half was in
1981 when 512 were detected.

"Incineration has been driven by false pretenses about the risks posed by continued storage," said
Craig Williams, national spokesperson for the Chemical Weapons Working Group (CWWG),
which is suing the Army to block start up of the first domestic incinerator in Tooele, Utah.
"Although the Army has been using exaggerations about risks of continued storage, calling the
munitions 'old, deteriorating, rusting, aging' and the like, there is no imminent threat which
precludes pursuing better approaches for arsenal destruction." Williams said.

In 1993, the Army provided data about leaks which seemed to show a skyrocketing trend. The
new data showed the Army changed the number of leakers in some years up to a third, according
to the Deseret News .

Williams blasted the Army and other incinerator advocates saying, "They have used inaccurate
information about leakers to intimidate communities into using a technology to destroy munitions
that would otherwise be unacceptable, and have been doing it for years." As recently as last
summer, the former Chairman of the National Research Council (NRC) Stockpile Committee, Dr.
Carl Peterson, told hundreds of citizens in Kentucky that he would "be begging the Army to build
an incinerator" because of the risk posed by the deteriorating munitions. Williams called these
kinds of statements, used to scare communities into accepting incinerators " fraudulent and
unconscionable."

In Senate Hearings held in June of this year, representatives of the Army, NRC and the Pentagon
pointed repeatedly to the "deteriorating condition" of the stockpile in efforts to convince the
Congress to continue funding the incineration program. Attorneys representing the Army repeated
the same argument in Federal Court in Utah just last week,

On Monday, the Court resumes hearing the lawsuit by CWWG, the Sierra Club and the Vietnam
Veterans of America Foundation seeking a temporary injunction to block start up of the Tooele
incinerator. Testimony in that case is expected to conclude on Wednesday with a decision issued
around August 8.

Meanwhile, in Washington, a Congressional conference committee is considering a Senate passed
proposal to transfer $60 million from the incinerator program to develop alternative ways of
destroying the chemical weapons stockpile.

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