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


Vol. 12, No. 7--April 6, 2004


DOD, ARMY ASK CONGRESS TO MERGE ALL CHEMICAL DEMIL PROGRAMS

Following months of discussion within the Pentagon and endorsement from the General Accounting Office (GAO), Defense Department and Army officials are officially asking Congress to back consolidation of all chemical demilitarization programs.

At an April 1 House hearing, Pentagon officials said their top priorities for the chemical weapons destruction program for fiscal year 2005 are that Congress fully fund the FY05 budget request and support moving the DOD Assembled Chemical Weapons Alternatives (ACWA) program under the Army’s Chemical Materials Agency (CMA).

The Army’s creation of CMA last year was a good start in streamlining the chemical demilitarization program, but further efficiencies are needed and can best be achieved by combining ACWA and CMA, Dale Klein, assistant to the secretary of defense for nuclear, chemical and biological defense programs, told the House Armed Services terrorism, unconventional threats and capabilities subcommittee.

“Consolidation of all chemical weapons elimination efforts into a single organization will create economies of scale and will allow us to unify the program during a time of much activity,” he said.

Several years ago, Congress specifically mandated ACWA be kept within the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) chain of command because of concerns that the Army was unwilling to explore nonincineration destruction technologies for assembled chemical weapons. Klein said ACWA has been successful in identifying the technologies to be used at the Pueblo, CO, and Blue Grass, KY, sites. “Now we need to move through the implementation phase. Placing the ACWA program under the Army with continued OSD oversight will enable the Army to better manage the total Chemical Demilitarization
Program,” he said.

Currently, the person who heads CMA also happens to be the person who heads ACWA -- Mike Parker -- but this dual role came about through circumstance not official policy. Patrick Wakefield, deputy assistant to the secretary of defense for chemical demilitarization & counterproliferation, raised the prospect of merging ACWA and CMA at an October hearing before the subcommittee, but other DOD officials said at the time that the department was not yet prepared to ask for that change (Defense
Environment Alert, Nov. 4, 2003, p4).

GAO earlier this year endorsed combining the chemical demilitarization program. “While our previous work has not commented on whether the ACWA program should be consolidated with the rest of the program, we believe that consolidating these two programs could result in some improvements in program management, provided that the consolidated program also develops and implements an overarching strategy and implementation plan,” GAO’s Henry L. Hinton Jr. said in a Jan. 5 response to questions from subcommittee Chairman Jim Saxton (R-NJ).

A spokesman for the Chemical Weapons Working Group, a citizens coalition that has been a strong advocate for the ACWA process, says a merger could potentially be a positive move but only under certain conditions.

Subcommittee members asked no questions about the merger proposal, focusing instead on concerns about the Pentagon’s slashing of Pueblo’s budget for FY05 and a controversial Army plan to treat secondary waste from the Newport, IN, site at a commercial facility in New Jersey. Rep. Joel Hefley (R-CO) pressed DOD to explain why it cut Pueblo’s FY05 budget by nearly $147 million, questioning whether this might put the site at greater risk of missing international treaty deadlines to destroy the chemical weapons stockpile. DOD is requesting just $4.9 million for Pueblo’s research and development budget (Defense Environment Alert, Feb. 10, p4).

Klein said DOD had to balance its budgets and that through “due diligence” it recognized that ACWA would not be able to expend its previously planned budget because of carry-over funds from FY04.

“There is no intent not to address citizens’ concerns,” he said, but moving the $147 million from Pueblo’s research and development budget to other areas of the chemical demilitarization program was based on the information available at the time of the budget preparation.

Specifically, the money was transferred to pay for “critical” Chemical Stockpile Emergency Preparedness Program (CSEPP) requirements and an improved air monitoring capability, Klein said in written testimony. GAO, however, is critical of the increases in CSEPP funding, arguing that poor leadership has allowed these costs to get out of control (see related story).
Klein told Hefley DOD is reviewing the design concept for the Pueblo facility, but DOD agrees “with citizens and elected officials alike that it is important to accelerate destruction efforts at Pueblo and Blue Grass.”

Parker said Pueblo is scheduled to begin pilot operations in 2007 and be in full-scale operations from 2008-10, allowing it to finish agent destruction before a 2012 international treaty deadline. Saxton and Rep. Frank LoBiondo (R-NJ) also asked DOD and Army officials detailed questions about a plan to send secondary waste from the Newport VX neutralization plant to a commercial facility in New Jersey. “We are all of the mind that we want you to be successful,” Saxton said, “but we have questions about the safety of the process.” Saxton, LoBiondo and several other New Jersey and Delaware lawmakers have asked the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC) to analyze the VX hydrolysate disposal.

Patrick Meehan of the CDC said his agency has evaluated and provided comments on one draft report by the commercial facility. But the agency has not conducted a comprehensive review of the project. Klein said safety is DOD’s number one concern, with “the environment right there along with safety.”

The Army is in the midst of a comment period for the plan, and additional analysis is being conducted, Parker said. Saxton said that as time goes on, his committee will have more questions. But he added it is comforting that the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, “one of the toughest in the country,” has oversight of the commercial facility.