Star Staff Writer
The study, released by the General Accounting Office in September, points out $1 billion worth of cost overruns stemming from delays, and says several chemical disposal facilities are operating behind schedule.
The GAO also found holes in the program’s management, citing the ping-pong approach between the Army and the Department of Defense on the program’s oversight. Oversight responsibility has changed between the two four times since 1986.
All this, according to the study, means the government will not meet the deadline for the elimination of chemical weapons under the Chemical Weapons Convention agreed to in 1997.
Officials at the Anniston Chemical Disposal Facility have been destroying tons of Cold War-era M-55 rockets filled with deadly GB nerve agent, or sarin, since Aug. 1. So far, they’ve disposed more than 9,300 rockets and 10,000 gallons of sarin.
The facility has shut down for several reasons in that time and is set to begin agent trial burns — which test the incinerator’s effectiveness — this Sunday.
A representative for the GAO, Henry L. Hinton, testified Thursday before the Subcommittee on Terrorism, Unconventional Threats and Capabilities. a subcommittee of the House Armed Services Committee.
“We don’t have a statement about that, we were not directly involved,” said Mike Abrams, a spokesman for the Army incinerator in Anniston.
Congressman Mike Rogers, R-Ala., who has a seat on the armed services committee, sat in for part of the hearing. The Anniston incinerator is in Rogers’ district.
Rogers said he is pleased with the progress of the Anniston incinerator. He said the blame for cost overruns and delays here and nationally can’t solely be laid at the feet of the Department of Defense and the Army. Outside factors share the blame, Rogers said, and he plans to investigate them.
“I made the point that the presence of that deteriorating stockpile in that community for so long has posed an unacceptable risk to me and my family and those in the community,” Rogers said of the Anniston stockpile. “I wanted to say the facility was operational long before it started up and it was the fault of some other entities rather than just the Army and the Department of Defense.”
Rogers pointed to the Chemical Stockpile Emergency Preparedness Program, which he said took 15 years and $246 million to ready the community for the possibility of an accident or incident at the chemical weapons stockpile at Anniston Army Depot.
“I want to know why it took that long and cost that much,” Rogers said.
The Anniston incinerator began operations Aug 1 after months of legal wrangling. Before that, issues of safety and a public outcry contributed to the incinerator missing its original start date, which was January of 2003.