Defense Environment Alert

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

Vol. 14, No. 18

September 5, 2006

UPCOMING DOD PLAN FOR PUEBLO WASTE COULD SPARK LOCAL OPPOSITION

DOD will likely announce in September what secondary treatment method it is endorsing for chemical weapons waste at the Pueblo Chemical Depot in Colorado--a decision that will likely spark citizen and environmentalist opposition if DOD chooses to ship off-site to a commercial facility in New Jersey.

At an Aug. 22 meeting, the Defense Acquisition Board (DAB)-the final arbiter on funding and treatment methods to be used at Pueblo short of Congress-was expected to make long-term funding and secondary treatment decisions regarding the Pueblo chemical demilitarization site, but DOD has yet to release any decisions made by the DAB on the matter. DOD sources say the department will likely make an announcement on whether it will endorse an on-site or off-site destruction technology later this month. One DOD source says the announcement could come at a Sept. 13 meeting of the Citizens Advisory Committee (CAC) in Pueblo, CO. The CAC is a govemor-appointed panel that advises DOD on chemical agent destruction at the Pueblo site.

"You'll see [an announcement] in the next 30 days," says a source with the Assembled Chemical Weapons Alternatives (ACWA) program, the DOD program overseeing the site. The source says, though, that "nothing has been finalized or signed by [DOD under secretary for acquisition Kenneth] Krieg."

At issue are competing disposal methods for secondary treatment of waste stemming from the neutralization of chemical weapons at the Pueblo Chemical Depot, one of eight demilitarization sites around the country. DOD officials have been considering off-site treatment of the neutralized waste from Pueblo as a potential cost-saving mechanism, even though public opposition to shipping similar waste from an Indiana facility has slowed military plans there. Environmentalists and citizen activists at Pueblo are advocating on-site secondary treatment and disposal through a process called supercritical water oxidation (SCWO), which they say is less hazardous than shipping the treated weapons waste to a DuPont facility in New Jersey.

The DAB is the decision-maker over which method will be approved, according to an ACWA spokeswoman, who says the decision will come through an acquisition decision memorandum, which has not been issued yet. "When one is issued to [Chemical Materials Agency head] Mike Parker, that's what we'll do," she says.

Debate over the final disposal method has been fueled by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's announcement earlier this year that the United States will not meet even an extended 2012 weapons destruction deadline under the Chemical Weapons Convention. Administration critics accuse the military of proposing off-site transportation plans that it knows are politically unpopular and have little chance of success, unnecessarily delaying destruction and disposal schedules that could be sped up if planners would agree to and prioritize on-site methods instead. Off-site shipment has several high-level opponents, including New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine (D-NJ) and Sens. Wayne Allard (R-CO) and Mitch McConnell (R-KY).

According to an Aug. 24 press release from the Chemical Weapons Working Group (CWWG), a chemical demilitarization watchdog group, the DAB in its recent meeting approved new funding levels for the Pueblo and Kentucky sites, which will share $300 million between them for each of the next five years. That figure-which would be short about $50 million annually of DOD full funding requests--could not be confirmed by DOD. "I haven't seen that yet, and nothing has been finalized," the ACWA source says,

"Speculation about time and schedule is just that," the source says of the Pueblo site. But a Pueblo ACWA source says regardless of the final disposal method, if the DAB did not approve the level of funding sought by managers at the site, as it appears, construction may be pushed back by two to three years.

A source with Global Green USA, which advocates threat reduction and weapons demilitarization, says not meeting the 2012 deadline means "we have no credibility to argue against Russia, Libya and South Korea not meeting it either. We're violating the spirit of the convention."

Some sources fear the DAB has placed a higher priority on saving money than meeting destruction deadlines, which could lead to approval at Pueblo for a shipment plan rather than SCWO. The Global Green source says that if the military went with the community's preference at Pueblo and similar plants in Kentucky and Indiana, "everything would be done on site," but that the DAB "is looking primarily at cost, not schedule." Even giving cost such high priority is problematic, however, because "including the cost of all the legal work [due to citizen challenges] and the cost of keeping [the Indiana plant] open for another five years and on and on, doing competitive cost estimates [for various options] becomes byzantine."

The Pueblo ACWA source says the site has not received any information about a final construction plan but that a "basic design" has been approved, leaving only the question of a final disposal method unresolved. Even if the DAB has made its decision, "it doesn't mean we'll know right away" what it is, the source says, adding that military planners "hope to know by the [Sept. 13] meeting" what will be done at the site.