Weapons disposal plan moving ahead - slowly

The Associated Press

RICHMOND, Ky. - A program to dispose of 523 tons of chemical weapons stored at Blue Grass Army Depot appears to be making headway after years of delays over community opposition to burning the chemicals but is still short of making the 2007 deadline.

Government officials charged with disposing of the chemicals and activists who wanted to ensure the job is done safely have resolved a 19-year argument over Blue Grass. They share optimism that the work, a neutralization process still in the design stages, is on the right track.

"I've been pretty pleased with how things are going right now," activist Jeanne Hibberd, a fund-raiser for Berea College, told the Courier-Journal. Hibberd is a representative on the new Chemical Destruction Community Advisory Board.

Under international treaty, the site and several others are supposed to be free of the chemicals by April 2007. But it could be a decade before the work is complete at the Kentucky facility.

Overall, the disposal program run by the Army and Department of Defense hasn't had a great track record, according to a report released in September by the General Accounting Office, the nonpartisan auditing arm of Congress. Even today, the program "remains in turmoil," the GAO said.