Defense Environment Alert

an exclusive biweekly report on defense policies for cleanup, compliance and pollution prevention

Vol. 16, No. 2

January 22, 2008

GAO SAYS ARMY DESTROYING CHEMICAL WEAPONS FASTER THAN PLANNED

A new report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO), the investigative arm of Congress, contends the Army is destroying its stockpiled chemical weapons faster than it projected three years ago, saying costs may be exaggerated. GAO calls on the Army to update its schedule, while also urging it to improve its contract award process and risk management practices.

The news comes as legislation likely to be enacted will call for the whole stockpile to be eliminated ahead of DOD's current schedule.

DOD, responding on behalf of the Army, largely supports the GAO recommendations, according to the report.

The report, requested by the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Terrorism & Unconventional Threats & Capabilities, calls into question the Army's current projections for time required to complete the chemical demilitarization program, and the funding to support the work, in light of an apparent acceleration in the pace of agent destruction. It questions whether cost and speed should not figure more highly in the Army's decision-making when awarding contracts, and also calls upon the Army to revise its risk management practices. The findings appear to turn the comer on what had been a spiraling of cost and schedule plaguing the program over many of its years. The report is available on Inside EPA. com. See page 2 for details.

The document, released to DOD for comment in December, comes as the pending fiscal year 2008 defense authorization bill, agreed to by both chambers of Congress but now re-opened for negotiation with the president over an unrelated matter, is calling for all U.S. stockpiled chemical weapons to be destroyed by 2017. The measure was advocated by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McCoimell (R-KY), who has long been a watchdog of the military's chemical weapons disposal program, in particular expressing concern over safety and management issues at the Blue Grass chemical weapons storage facility in his state.

Under DOD's current schedule, the whole program would wrap up in 2023, when the last facility to close, Blue Grass, would shutter its gates. In April 2006 then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld conceded DOD would miss an international treaty deadline of 2012, and in early 2007 DOD formally certified a plan to stretch out the cost and schedule for destruction of stockpiled weapons for the last two sites, saying it would make the program affordable on an annual basis despite higher total costs.

GAO notes that progress at facilities managed by the Army's Chemical Materials Agency (CMA), which are mainly incinerating their chemical agent, has been faster than projected under the current schedule, and that therefore cost estimates may be exaggerated. The report deals primarily with these facilities, rather than the other two stockpile sites, in Pueblo, CO, and Blue Grass, that are due to dispose of their agent by "neutralization" and are managed by a separate DOD program, known as the Assembled Chemical Weapons Alternatives (ACWA) program. The two ACWA sites are the last sites to dispose of their weapons, and therefore would be
the most affected by the 2017 deadline.

"With most of the chemical agent destruction sites significantly ahead of the 2005 program office schedule, the program milestones appear to be overly conservative," says the report, adding that "the program schedule milestones may no longer be a realistic baseline for measuring program performance."

One environmental activist argues that overall the GAO report fits with the 2017 deadline demanded by Congress, as it makes the case that more money is available for the ACWA program than recently estimated by the Army.

However, the GAO report finds fault with CMA's risk management practices, which it says need improvement, and also recommends that the agency's criteria for awarding contracts be reviewed in light of the faster than anticipated pace of destruction. "CMA could improve its use of award fees to incentivize the systems contractors to try to meet the [Chemical Weapons Convention] treaty deadline," GAO says. The auditors also found that the question of closing costs, which include cleanup and dismantling of facilities after all agent has been destroyed, has not been adequately addressed.

GAO makes 13 recommendations for DOD to correct management weaknesses in the weapons destruction program. In its responses, DOD concurs either partially or fully with 12 of them. DOD takes issue with a requirement that realistic facility closure costs be estimated for each of the sites, arguing that it is redundant in light of another, accepted by DOD, which calls for more accurate cost estimates over the lifetime of the program.

DOD's concurrence with most of GAO's recommendations comes as the Army's CMA prepares for a switch in leadership. Current Acting Director Dale Ormond is leaving his post this month for a more senior position at the Pentagon. He will be replaced by his deputy, Conrad Whyne.

The environmental activist welcomes the findings of the GAO report, arguing that if savings can be made in the CMA-managed segment of the program due to early completion, then those should be used to accelerate the pace of destruction at the two ACWA-managed sites. The activist, who supported use of neutralization at Pueblo and Blue Grass and opposes incineration, argues that opting for neutralization has not delayed the elimination of the U.S. stockpile, pointing to numerous delays in the overall program dating back to the 1990s.

CMA did not issue a separate response from the DOD position articulated in GAO's report. The activist believes that the handover of CMA leadership will not lead to a radical change in policy by the agency, as Whyne has been in his position for some time and will still have to take Pentagon direction.