By  Joe Bauman
Deseret Morning News

An anti-incineration activist says the Army has been studying a transportation corridor by which chemical weapons would be shipped from Colorado to the Tooele County incinerator.
     
Craig Williams, director of the Chemical Weapons Working Group, based in Berea, Ky., told reporters in a teleconference this past week that such a route is under study.
     
Earlier this month, Chemical Weapons Working Group announced it had learned the Army was strapped for funding of the program to eliminate the country's stockpiles of chemical arms. It also was studying possible relocation, it added.
     
The day after that announcement, a defense department spokeswoman told the Deseret Morning News that the department had told the Army to examine how to achieve the deadline it faces of destroying all such arms by April 2012. The weapons are stored in eight stockpiles around the country.
     
While federal law prohibits the transportation of chemical arms, she said, the DoD told the Army "to also develop options for relocation along with other alternatives," added the spokeswoman, Cheryl Irwin.
     
The incinerator near Stockton, Tooele County, has been burning nerve agent and mustard agent since 1996. But stockpiles at other states are not yet being destroyed, notably at Pueblo Chemical Depot, near Pueblo, Colo., and Blue Grass Army Depot, near Richmond, Ky. No work has begun on destroying these stockpiles, and plants to eliminate the arms have not been built.
     
Williams said in a press release this past week that news reports say Pentagon officials met with Colorado's senators, assuring them they do not plan to move the mustard agent out of the Pueblo depot.
     
However, Williams added, the Army was "specifically tasked" to consider relocation for both the Colorado and Kentucky stockpiles.
     
"In fact, in conversations with several sources . . . I was told, point blank, that 'a study of shipping Colorado's stockpile to Utah is underway at this moment.' "
     
When the Deseret Morning News asked him who said that, Williams replied by e-mail he could not release the identity. He suggested the paper call DoD officials.
     
Jeff Lendable of the Army's Chemical Materials Agency, based at Aberdeen Proving Ground, Md., said the focus of a DoD memo is to develop alternatives to meet the deadline to destroy all chemical arms.
     
According to a press release he supplied, the Army is considering and evaluating "relocation of some of the chemical weapons stockpile located at various storage sites across the United States."
     
Also, the Army was looking at other alternatives, he said.
     
"We have just received our directions from DoD on the matter," said Michael A. Parker, who is director of the Chemical Materials Agency, quoted in the release.
     
Under international treaty, the deadline for 100 percent destruction of the arms was April 29, 2007. But last year, the United States requested and received an extension to Dec. 31, 2007, for 45 percent destruction.
     
"It is expected that the U.S. will apply for a one-time, five-year overall destruction deadline delay to April 29, 2012," says the agency's press release.
     
"It is premature at this time to comment on the contents of the evaluations," Parker added, according to the release.
     
Parker added that the federal government has a proven track record in safely storing and eliminating chemical materiel, while protecting workers, the public and the environment.
     
"This will be a cornerstone of any alternatives we consider."

E-mail: bau@desnews.com