Columbia Basin Media
"We put the Middle Columbia River Basin into words."


January 19, 2004

By F. Ellsworth Lockwood
Columbia Basin Media

Director of Chemical Materials Agency visits Hermiston

County officials cite "broken" funding system

Hermiston, OR -- Morrow County officials feared Army reorganization would cut them off from reliable Army contacts and jeopardize the Army's verbal commitments. Army officials, then visiting the area, down played the likelihood of such a crisis.
Michael Parker, Director of
Chemical Materials Agency,
is in Hermiston this week.


That was a year ago, at meetings in Irrigon, Oregon. Wednesday, the same Morrow County officials described a program where their old contacts are gone and they do not know where to turn for help, other than, perhaps, to Congress.

And only federal help can fix the broken budget system, they say. For examples: The budget for Chemical Stockpile Emergency Preparedness Program suffers a two year lag, and pre-validated requests are identified as "unfunded." In addition, earlier, overly optimistic, engineering estimates have defined the norm thus strangling additional funding for safety programs. Repeated requests to Federal Emergency Management Agency have failed to produce the results that the county is looking for. Added to that, Morrow County fears the federal government is looking for places to cut the budget.

Michael Parker, Director of the Chemical Materials Agency, stopped at the Hermiston Outreach Office for a lunch work session Wednesday, Jan. 14, 2004, with Mayors, county commissioners, Chemical Stockpile Emergency Preparedness Program staff. Some of the 40 people gathered for the lunch and to meet Parker may have taken it as a play upon words when Parker noted, "It is said, our business is going out of business." Parker is the new director who took charge of the nation's chemical weapons beginning February 18, 2003, in what was yet another reorganization of the nation's chemical weapons demolition program.

(Following this story is a sequence of organizational changes since 1997.)

During a brief question and answer period, Morrow County Commissioner Ray Grace presented a list of the county's "questions of concern" and asked for the "name and rank of the senior officer" to whom the county could go and get action. Among the problems noted, CSEPP financial planning is made difficult because when each year's budget cycle ends, it is months before government money begins to flow again.

Added to the cash flow problems, the letter indicated, the county's communication with the Army has been hampered by the reorganizations.

Morrow County's letter indicated the following:
  • Army organizational changes have adversely affected CSEPP's direct line of communication with the Army, and Oregon's elected officials have "lost contacts within the Army, which in the past were able to assist us with both fiscal and technical issues."

  • Federal Emergency Management Agency's (FEMA's} budget cycle puts budget submissions two years behind the federal budget cycle and causes items to be categorized as either "late" or "unfunded." The letter called the budget cycle a "broken system" which had not been fixed even after repeated requests for change.

  • Illustrating the funding lags, Grace noted that the 2004 Defense Authorization Act was signed in October of 2003, but it was well into January before Oregon finally received its $5.6 million share. "This delay seriously affects our ability to continue CSEPP work during the first quarter," the letter said.

  • "Life Cycle Cost Estimates (LCCE) were made years before anyone could possibly provide a best 'educated guess' at what public safety requirements would dictate." Yet, based on those estimates, FEMA notified the county that budget requirements received since 2001 must therefore be considered "unfunded."

  • "It is increasingly difficult to provide for the safety of our citizens and impossible to accommodate the Department of Defense budgeting cycle, while handicapped with FEMA's submission schedule." This is even more so as the commencement of incineration approaches, the letter says. (Incineration is expected to begin this year, perhaps this summer.}
    • On behalf of the county, Grace urged Parker, "Please give us the name and rank of the senior officer ... to whom CSEPP can go." He also asked Parker to "assist us in fundamental reform" that would eliminate the two year budget time lag, synchronize emergency preparedness with the federal system, and guarantee that FEMA would submit program needs in time to be included in the President's budget. Grace also asked "Is there a FEMA-Army partnership to expedite the release of authorized funds? If not, can you help expedite creation of such a mechanism?"

    The senior person in the progam is Mr. Bolton, Parker said. Parker noted that before the reorganization, several programs were separate, now they are all under one umbrella. With three sites already operating, "We are moving into an operational stage," he said. Now storage, disposal, and emergency preparedness will be under one program, and there is a need to know what is needed to be safe, he said.


    A brief History of
    changes in Chemical Demilitarization
  • November 1999 -- Prociv Resigned -- Assistant Secretary of the Army for Chemical Demilitarization, Theodore Prociv, announced he would resign, effective November 1, 1999. (Source is WWW.CWWG.ORG)

  • December 2001 -- Programs Transferred to ALT -- The Department of Defense announced that oversight of the Chemical Weapons Disposal Program had transferred from the Army's Acquisition, Logistics and Technology (ALT) over to Installations and Environment.(IE)

  • April 2002 -- PMCD Chief Retired -- James Bacon, Program Manager for Chemical Demilitarization (PMCD) at Aberdeen Proving Ground, Md. retired.

  • January 2003 -- Transfer of Programs Reversed -- Chemical weapons disposal was pulled from the Army Environmental Office and transferred back to Army Acquisition, Logistics, and Technology. (CWWG) Secretary of the Army, Thomas White, ordered the responsibility for chemical weapons demilitarization taken away from Dr. Mario Fiori at the Army's Environmental Office after only 13 months and transferred it back to the Army's Acquisition Office. (CWWG)

  • February 2003 -- Storage and Disposal Combined --Chemical Demilitarization Program is placed under the Assistant Secretary of the Army for Acquisition, Logistics and Technology. In January 2003 DOD Secretary White directed Assistant Secretary Claude Bolton, Jr. (Assistant Secretary of the Army for Acquisition, Logistics and Technology) to assume responsibility for the Chemical Demilitarization Program, putting the stockpile storage and disposal responsibilities under one roof.

  • In October 2003, under Bolton, PMCD(Program Manager for Chemical Demilitarization) is dissolved, merged with the former SBCCOM's Storage and Security, forming a new organization, the U.S. Army Chemical Materials Agency (CMA), headed by Mr. Michael Parker."


    Before CMA formed, storage and demilitarization had been separate, under the Chemical Demilitarization Program (CDP) and the Soldier Biological and Chemical Command (SBCCOM).

  • Presently -- Three Programs Under Umbrella -- According to Parker, we now have CMA has finally combined three chemical weapons programs -- storage, destruction, and emergency preparations -- under one umbrella. (Parker had also been the Program Manager for the Pentagon's Assembled Chemical Weapons Assessment (ACWA) program since it's conception in 1997. The ACWA program under Parker had successfully identified and demonstrated alternatives to incineration for chemical weapons disposal, and those alternatives were selected for use in Colorado and Kentucky.

    • Terms
    IE -- Installations and Environment; ALT -- Acquisitions, Logistics and Technology; CWWG -- Chemical Weapons Working Group; PMCD -- Program Manager for Chemical Demilitarization; SBCCOM -- Soldier Biological and Chemical Command