ARKANSAS DEMOCRAT GAZETTE
Date: 8/16/2001

Risk at Army chemical sites reported GAO finds people near storage areas in seven states are vulnerable

ROBERT GEHRKE THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

WASHINGTON -- Hundreds of thousands of people who live near sites where the Army stores deadly chemicals are
potentially at risk from a spill or other emergency because of a lack of protections.

A study by the General Accounting Office found communities in seven states, including Arkansas, have not met critical emergency-preparedness milestones. Three of those states -- Kentucky, Alabama and Indiana -- still have a long way to go.

"There should be no doubt after this report that we're not where we should be and we have a tremendous amount of work to get to that point," said Rep. Bob Riley, R-Ala.

The Army has stockpiled nearly 30,000 tons of deadly chemicals at eight sites around the country. Two stockpiles are near state borders, meaning communities in 10 states could be affected by an emergency.

The chemicals are to be destroyed by 2007 as part of an international chemical-weapons treaty, although an internal Army memo made public last spring said the program was as much as 11 years behind schedule.

The Army created the Chemical Stockpile Emergency Preparedness Program in 1988 to work with the Federal Emergency Management Agency and state and local governments to come up with plans to protect the roughly 1 million people living near the sites. The goal for implementation was 1998, but none of the states met it.

Last year a small drop of the deadly nerve agent sarin leaked from a smokestack at the chemical storage and incineration facility in Tooele, Utah. When inhaled, sarin constricts the lungs and can halt breathing. Although no one was injured, the accident prompted members of Congress to ask the GAO to update a 1997 report on emergency preparedness at the sites.

The latest report found progress has been made. Utah, Maryland and Washington were deemed fully prepared for an emergency. Arkansas, Colorado, Illinois and Oregon fell just short of compliance. Since the GAO report was completed, Colorado has finished its final emergency preparations, said Dan Civis, chief of the army program.

"I believe these communities are much better prepared to handle emergency response than they were 10 years ago," he said. "I believe there's still room for improvement."

Alabama, for example, has not settled on an emergency-response plan and has not done enough to educate the public, the report said. It does not have any "over-pressurized" facilities, public buildings designed to keep out clouds of chemicals.

In Kentucky, only about half of the 13 hospitals that would take patients exposed to chemical agents have the antidote to those agents. And 35 buildings in Kentucky need to be turned into over-pressurized facilities.

Alabama's lack of preparation comes despite twice as many federal dollars being spent there than any other state. The state program has spent nearly $108 million, compared with less than $50 million in Oregon and Utah and about $35 million in Kentucky.

"There are some unique problems in Alabama that other sites do not face," said Lee Helms, acting director of the Alabama Emergency Management Agency. "We have more people at risk in Alabama than anywhere else in the country."

About 30 percent of all the people living near the chemical sites are around Anniston, Ala.