Hermiston Herald
5/1/01

Group says Army giving misleading timetables,
cost projections

By Frank Lockwood
Staff writer

WASHINGTON D.C. - Cost projections and timetables for disposing of chemical weapons were challenged at a U.S. Senate Appropriations Subcommittee hearing in Washington, D.C. on Wednesday.

Craig Williams of chemical Weapons Working Group testified of looming cost overruns and misleading time schedules.

Afterward, the U.S. Army denied the accuracy of Wednesday's testimony. Army documents show that destroying the United States' chemical weapons stockpile will require years beyond what the Army has made public, Williams said.

Army spokesman Greg Mahall, however, speaking by telephone, told The Hermiston Herald after Wednesday's hearing that the Army's projected schedules for chemical weapons disposal are correct.

Williams had testified that "secret" Army documents revealed that the Army hid real cost estimates, and failed to acknowledge that six of eight disposal sites would fail to meet publicized completion dates for chemical stockpiles destruction.

"Now we learn from the Army's own document that in Oregon incineration will miss the deadline by six years and seven months, said Irrigon resident Debbie Burns. "It is outrageous that the Army would withhold this information rather than admit that ... (and) move forward with an alternative technology."

Burns is on the board of directors of GASP, a group which has been pushing for emissions-free alternatives for chemical weapon disposal. Burns taught school at Irrigon for a number of years, and now teaches in Hermiston. Irrigon, where Burns lives, is the nearest town to Oregon's chemical weapons demilitarization site, Umatilla Chemical Weapons Disposal Facility.

In Washington on Wednesday, Williams based his testimony on the Army's October "Operations Schedule Task Force 2000 Final Report." The Army will experience multi-billion dollar cost overruns, and still not meet international treaty deadlines, Williams says.

The report shows the Army's chemical weapons destruction program is far behind schedule, Williams says.

Mahall, however, told The Hermiston Herald that Williams used "worst-case input" to draw incorrect conclusions, then presented them as fact to members of the Senate.

Chemical Weapons Working Group alleges that the Army cannot ensure "maximum protection," that the Army has been putting out false schedule information, that the Army's chemical weapons incineration program is already more than 600 percent over budget and 14 years behind schedule, and that Army documents show the United States will not complete chemical weapons destruction until the year 2018.

For Umatilla, according to Williams, chemical weapons would not be completely destroyed until August 2012 compared with the 2006 completion date projected by the Army. The issue of the target completion date is important to those promoting alternatives to incineration as the best, safest, fastest way to rid the country of chemical weapons stockpiles.

According to the Army, the new technologies would take years to prove, test, and refine.

But Williams says the technologies have already been demonstrated as viable. He said it would take only a few years to retrofit the existing facility at the depot. Alternatives have already been designed and engineered to fit into the "footprint" of the incinerator, he says. The international treaty deadline, by which time chemical weapons are supposed to have been destroyed, is 2007 (2012 if a five-year extension is requested and granted).

"The Army has used the treaty deadline as a club to beat communities into accepting incineration as a disposal technology, despite the existence of safer, cleaner, disposal methods," Williams said in a CWWG release. Army spokesmen have repeatedly stressed that incineration is the only technology tried and proven and capable of meeting treaty deadlines, especially when dealing with rockets such as those stored at Umatilla. The Chemical Weapons Working Group calculated that chemical weapons destruction, using incineration, cannot be completed until 2014 at two sites, and 2018 at another.

Mahall said Williams made erroneous interpretations. "Until Johnston Atoll and Tooele (incineration projects), no one had done this kind of incineration before," Mahall said. The Army had therefore relied on projections using the best information available.

The October 2000 report takes information from real operations, which infuses "an element of reality" into the projections, Mahall said. For example, the Army found that liquid had jelled in some rockets, which the Army had not anticipated.

But the October report had several types of data: actual operations input, anticipated outcomes, worst-case outcomes, "and everything in between," Mahall said, and Williams misused them.

"Williams took the worst-case scenarios possible, put them in his machine, and drew conclusions. Then he presented them as fact when indeed they are not fact," Mahall said. Williams, also speaking by telephone, said Friday that the Army's "spin" was "absolutely false." The document was a final report. Three consultants had reviewed the document, including Williams' methodology, equations, data interpretations and conclusions. The three consultants had over 50 years chemical weapons operations experience, he said.

"It was not a worst-case scenario, and I was not selective in what I factored in," Williams said. In the end, the Army's posture will be demonstrated to be false, he said.

One of the slogans found on the CWWG web page was, "No emissions are good emissions." CWWG has quoted Defense Appropriations Committee chairman Ted Stevens (R-Ark.) as saying that the standard for chemical weapons incinerators "ought to be no emissions, and if that is not the case, we should shut them down." According to an Army fact sheet, the incinerator is designed to meet the requirements of the Clean Air Act.

"The exhaust from one single cigarette contains far higher concentrations of chlorinated dioxins than do the emissions from any of the Johnston Atoll incinerators," the Army document says. But Williams says such facts are meant to "take your eye off the ball."

"There are no levels of nerve gas and mustard agent coming from a cigarette, nor any PCB's, mercury or lead. Furthermore the Army is not required to consider the amounts of these toxins already present in the environment from pesticides, herbicides, or other existing poisons."

The Army's official position has been that there will always be new
technologies on the horizon but, due to international and domestic laws, and the danger of continued storage, the United States should not wait for the development of new technology. The Army has argued that incineration is the only "proven" technology to dispose of the stockpile.

The CWWG advocates for non-incineration technologies they say are faster, cheaper and safer than incineration. Those alternative technologies are in various stages of development, but they are already proven, not not on the horizon, Williams claims. "They have been demonstrated through a rigorous process that the incineration technology would not have made it through to the demonstration phase."

The new technologies pass stricter tests. "If the incineration technology had been offered into the alternative technology evaluation (known as ACWA), it would not have passed the initial screening criteria," Williams says.

According to the Army, incineration is safe and is on schedule: the 2005 target for completion of chemical weapons disposal at Umatilla is still a realistic expectation, Mahall said.