Defense Environment Alert
February 25, 2003

PARKER TO OVERSEE CHEMICAL WEAPONS STORAGE, DESTRUCTION

Army leaders have named Michael Parker to take the reins of a new agency overseeing chemical weapons storage and destruction. Citizen activists are welcoming the choice of Parker, who until now had headed the Defense Department program that researched and developed alternatives to incineration for assembled chemical weapons destruction.

The Army Feb. 19 announced Parker as the acting director of the Chemical Materials Agency (CMA), which the Army created under a reorganization of the chemical weapons program. For the first time, chemical weapons demilitarization and storage functions have been placed under a single director. The agency falls under the assistant secretary for acquisition, logistics and technology, who took responsibility for the program from the assistant secretary for installations and environment in a reorganization decision made public last month (Defense Environment Alert, Jan. 28, p4).

"The CMA brings all the parties under one roof necessary to carry out the mission of the safe storage and elimination of obsolete and aging chemical weapons in the U.S.," Parker said in a Feb. 19 statement. He said safety will continue to be the Army's top priority in destroying the nation's chemical weapons at eight stockpile sites.

Citizen activists have long criticized the chemical weapons destruction program, citing a lack of candor and true public involvement among other issues. But with the choice of Parker, one activist predicts "they're going to start shooting straight with communities." Craig Williams, director of the Chemical Weapons Working Group, a longtime watchdog of the program, told Defense Environment Alert, "I am confident that the intention of CMA's director is to open this program up and deal with communities in a straight-forward fashion."

Parker for the past several years has overseen the Assembled Chemical Weapons Assessment (ACWA) program an effort created by Congress to investigate methods other than the Army's traditional process of incineration to destroy assembled chemical weapons. While critical of the Army's incineration program, citizen activists have consistently praised the ACWA program, which allowed significant involvement from citizens in overseeing the testing and evaluation of alternative technologies. ACWA technologies are now being fielded at two of the eight stockpile and disposal sites.

"Putting Mr. Parker in charge is an extremely visible acknowledgement of the success of the ACWA program and an endorsement of the way business was conducted within the ACWA program under his management," Williams said. ACWA shifted the way business had been conducted through transparency, open communications and "true community involvement in decision-making, something that [the office of the Program Manager for Chemical Demilitarization (PMCD)] seems to have never understood," he said. PMCD up until now has run the destruction program, while the Army's Soldier, Biological & Chemical Command has overseen the storage of the weapons.

"This means that even sites which now have incinerators can benefit from the kind of honesty and transparency Mr. Parker has established in the ACWA program," said Brenda Lindell with the Alabama-based Families Concerned About Nerve Gas Incineration, in a CWWG press release.

The Army believes the move to consolidate storage and destruction responsibilities under one agency "will achieve greater efficiencies and better meet the needs of the program for the future," an Army spokesman said last month.