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EPA finds broad applications for ACWA non-incineration technologies
Links to More Information on Safe Alternative Solutions
- ACWA Update...
- Alternatives to Chemical Weapons Incineration
- October 16, 1998 Letter to Secretary of Defense William Cohen from Members of Congress
- Dialogue on Alternatives Moves toward Disposal Solutions
- Click here to go to Assembled Chemical Weapons Assessment (ACWA) Home Page.
EPA finds broad applications
for ACWA non-incineration technologies
(Excerpted from the August 2000 issue of CWWG's newsletter "Common Sense")
The Chemical Weapons Working Group (CWWG)
has never been alone in its call for non-incineration technologies.
Around the world communities threatened by military and commercial
incinerators are looking for safe, environmentally sound clean-up
methods. Now, as the successes of the Assembled Chemical Weapons
Assessment (ACWA) program continue to unfold, more and more grassroots
groups, regulators and government agencies are looking to ACWA
as a possible solution for military and hazardous waste clean-up.
In its April 2000 draft report "Potential Applicability of
[ACWA] Technologies to RCRA Waste Streams and Contaminated Media,"
the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) states that "the
potential market for ACWA technologies includes wastes that currently
are treated by combustion and organic waste that are treated by
other technologies or are disposed," such as pesticides,
industrial chemcials, agricultural chemcials, medicinal chemicals
and more. The report details each ACWA technology process and
includes a list of other similar non-incineration systems from
the EPA's Technology Innovation Office database.
ACWA was created in 1997 after Congress directed the Department
of Defense to identify and demonstrate non-incineration technologies
for chemical weapons disposal. This Congressional directive,
and the framework for the ACWA program, came as a direct result
of pressure from CWWG. ACWA technologies were chosen based on
their capability to meet a set of stringent criteria developed
by the consensus of grassroots environmental advocates, state
and federal regulators, local citizen leaders and the Department
of Defense. Demonstrations of three non-incineration technologies
were completed last year, with another three technologies demonstrating
this summer.
ACWA technologies are superior to incineration in many ways, including
their capability to prevent production of dioxins and furans.
In light of EPA's most recent dioxin reassessment, which estimates
that the risks from human exposure to dioxins are ten times greater
than previously thought, ACWA technologies are far more publicly
acceptable than incineration. Whereas incinerator smoketsacks
provide a direct route for toxic chemicals into the air, ACWA
technologies can contain toxic by-products.
Using safe, clean disposal technologies is putting the Precautionary
Principle into practice. The EPA's report on ACWA technologies
can help all anti-incineration groups get there. For more information
on the ACWA program and the movement for advanced non-incineration
technologies, please contact the CWWG at (859) 986-0868 or see
our web site at www.cwwg.org