More Money Needed to Meet CW Disposal Deadline, Experts Say

By Chris Schneidmiller
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON -- The United States must add hundreds of millions of dollars to the construction budgets of two Defense Department facilities in order to meet a new congressional deadline to eliminate the nation’s chemical weapons stockpile, an expert said last week (see GSN, Nov. 12, 2007).

The fiscal 2008 defense appropriations bill passed late last year requires the Pentagon to complete disposal of thousands of tons of deadly blister and nerve agents and their accompanying munitions by Dec. 30, 2017.

All destruction sites now in operation are expected to finish off stockpiles at five storage depots at varying times before that date. That puts the onus on the two plants that are not yet built -- chemical agent neutralization facilities at the Pueblo Chemical Depot in Colorado and the Blue Grass Army Depot in Kentucky.

Funding for construction at the two sites in this fiscal year is slightly more than $104 million. That amount will have to be tripled or quadrupled for several years in order to complete weapons disposal by 2017, rather than the anticipated end date of 2023, said Paul Walker, director of the Legacy Program at the environmental organization Global Green USA.

The former head of the Assembled Chemical Weapons Alternatives program, which manages disposal programs at Blue Grass and Pueblo, said in a March 2007 memo that his agency would need a total budget of up to $500 million this year to begin accelerating work. It received nearly $100 million less.

Rapid progress at these sites would serve to boost U.S. security and the nation's standing in the international community, Walker argued.

"It's very important that we move forward and eliminate these stockpiles," he said. "It's important from a terrorist and homeland security perspective. It's also important from an accident perspective. These stockpiles are getting older and older all the time."

The Pueblo Chemical Depot stores 2,611 tons of mustard agent in mortars and artillery shells, while its counterpart in Kentucky holds 523 tons of mustard and VX and sarin nerve agents in rockets and projectiles. Combined, they represent around 10 percent of the decades-old U.S. stockpile, which the government began destroying in 1990.

Following the Sept. 11 attacks it appeared that extra funding would be directed toward more quickly eliminating the arsenals at Blue Grass and Pueblo, but that effort stalled as the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq consumed tens of billions of dollars, Walker said.

Observers have been frustrated in recent years by funding levels and by what environmental activist Craig Williams called "fits and starts" in the program, including the Pentagon's decision to have the plants redesigned in order to save money. The disposal agency responds that it has balanced schedule and cost as best possible amid "the many competing requirements of national defense."

Funding for the agency has oscillated wildly in recent years, from $52 million in fiscal 2006 to nearly $350 million the next year as lawmakers from Colorado and Kentucky demanded that the projects move forward.

Assembled Chemical Weapons Alternatives received $407 million in the budget year that began Oct. 1. However, the majority of funding is directed toward research and development of disposal technology and the construction budget this year dropped by nearly $27 million.

While significant preparatory construction is under way at both sites, work on the actual disposal plants is not scheduled to begin until this spring. The present plan calls for disposal operations to begin at Pueblo in 2015 and finish five years later. The Blue Grass facility would open in 2017 and close in 2023.

Given the unlikelihood at this point of revamping the design of the plants to increase their capacity, the best option to speed the process is to shorten the construction period, Walker said. Anything less than $1 billion is "small change" at the Pentagon, so if the will exists in the congressional or executive branches the money is there to make that happen, he said.

"It's just a matter of hiring more people, getting them on board and speeding up construction," Walker said. "I think it will (happen). I'm optimistic."

Williams, executive director of the Kentucky-based Chemical Weapons Working Group, sounded a slightly less optimistic note during an interview. "I believe it can happen. Do I believe it will happen? That's going to depend on a number of factors that are out of my control."

He argued, though, that additional funding could speed the entire process at the plants, from construction to weapons disposal -- for example, by allowing for continuous operations rather than the planned four-day-a-week schedule.

Pentagon officials are scheduled to meet with lawmakers by next summer to discuss strategies for meeting the deadline.

"ACWA staff are currently looking at numerous options for accelerating the program and will be narrowing down those that would be most effective in the coming months," an agency spokeswoman said by e-mail. "It would be premature at this time to comment on options that may or may not even be viable, as there are many variables that need to be examined such as new funding levels or revised permitting requirements."

The spokeswoman said she could also not discuss budget details for the next funding year or beyond. The Bush administration is scheduled to issue its proposed fiscal 2009 spending plan in February.

Failure to quicken the pace of weapons disposal could have ramifications in the United States and abroad, Walker and Williams said.

The longer the weapons remain in existence, the longer they could be targets for terrorists looking to steal them or cause an on-site release of lethal materials, Walker said.

Chemical agent leaks and potential accidents are another concern (see GSN, Dec. 7, 2007). The Army had fears a decade ago that chemical munitions -- some of which still contain explosives and propellant -- might begin exploding in their storage bunkers within a few years, Walker said. That has not happened yet but each passing year increases the risk of retaining aging weapons, observers said.

"Both of these communities are sitting on weapons of mass destruction that aren't getting any younger," Williams said.

Stretching out the disposal schedule could add more than $3 billion to the total price tag for Blue Grass and Pueblo, bringing the cumulative cost to $8 billion, according to a June 2007 newspaper report (see GSN, June 14, 2007).

Even eliminating the weapons in 2017 would put the United States five years beyond its obligation under the Chemical Weapons Convention. Delaying completion of chemical disarmament another six years would further undermine Washington's authority before the treaty's protocol agency in pressing Russia and other nations to eliminate their stockpiles and trying to bring additional nations into the fold, Walker said.

"Right now where we are sort of muddling through chemical demilitarization and stretching out our schedule over a decade beyond where it should be, we have very little influence to tell others to get rid of their stockpiles as quickly as possible," Walker said.