Depot's weapons center of new furor

RICHMOND - On Jan. 6, a train crash sent a poisonous cloud of chlorine into the sky over Graniteville, S.C. It took 21/2 hours for the first warning to be issued. Nine people died.

Some of the world's most lethal chemical weapons are stored in earth-covered bunkers at the Blue Grass Army Depot near Richmond, protected from terrorists and monitored for leaks by the Army.

What would happen if those chemicals were loaded onto train cars or trucks and a similar crash occurred in Louisville or St. Louis? Exposure to a tiny amount of VX, one of the chemicals stored at the depot, can kill a person within minutes. No one knows how many people might die in such a situation.

"In a perfect world where there was no (terrorism) threat, there would still be enormous concern" about the safety of transport, said Robert Miller, a member of two citizens' advisory commissions in Madison County.

Just a few years ago, Madison residents got the Pentagon to agree to build a $2 billion plant to chemically neutralize the depot's weapons. But now the Pentagon wants the Army to study alternatives to incineration, including moving the weapons.

Madison Judge-Executive Kent Clark said he doubts the weapons are going anywhere, because elected officials would never allow it. "I don't think under any circumstances could they ever transport those chemicals over public highways," he said. "It'll never go that far and they know it."

The effort to destroy the nation's 31,500 tons of chemical weapons is a race against time. Under an international treaty ratified by the U.S. Senate in 1997, the United States has until April 2007 to destroy its stockpile. It can ask that the deadline be extended by five years.

To destroy the stockpile, the Army built incinerators in four states and on remote Johnson Atoll in the South Pacific. But after widespread opposition in Madison County and political pressure in Washington, the Pentagon agreed to build a neutralization plant instead of an incinerator at the depot.

However, earlier this month, preliminary budget documents obtained by the Berea-based Chemical Weapons Working Group showed that the Pentagon planned to slash funding for neutralization plants at the depot and in Pueblo, Colo. The move would delay construction for several years.

The Defense Department-isn't saying why, though local officials assume it's because of the war in Iraq. But some say there's also an element of unhappiness with the way the agency set up to run the neutralization program does things -- closely involving the public, not just issuing orders.

Pentagon spokeswoman Cheryl Irwin did not respond to a request to interview Michael Wynne, acting undersecretary of defense, or Patrick Wakefield, the official whom people in Madison County consider most responsible for the budget controversy.

The Pentagon has not said where or how the weapons might be moved.

Craig Williams, director of the Chemical Weapons Working Group, said he thinks trucks are more likely to be used than trains because a train is harder to protect.

But the incinerator at Anniston, Ala., is nearly 400 miles away, and there is fervent opposition there. A trip to Tooele, Utah, is 1,800 miles and would go through seven states.

No one seems to think the Pentagon would attempt to fly the weapons out because of the devastation a crash would cause.

"A planeload of nerve agent, that would just be beyond excuse for anybody to have gotten us into that," said Leonard Cole, an adjunct professor at Rutgers University who studies biological and chemical weapons.

Because the technology and disposal timetables differ from site to site, Williams speculates that the Pentagon might resort to wholesale shuffling of weap-ons in order to make the treaty deadline -- sending one site's rockets to a second site and that site's mustard agent somewhere else.

But he doubts the Pentagon can make the deadline regardless of what it does. All four incinerators could miss the 2012 deadline because of frequent breakdowns and other problems, he said. Things are likely to get worse at Tooele, which wasn't designed to operate this long.

Previous studies have shown that on-site destruction is considerably less risky than transport. The Army announced Thursday that its new study will be led by Kevin P. Duvall, who is to report his findings to Wynne by March 21.

Not everyone in Madison County thinks the weapons pose much of a threat. "We won World War II shipping explosives and chemicals all over the country," said William Scott, 83, a former chief of the ammunition surveillance division at the depot.

Asked whether he would be worried about them riding down Interstate 75, a football field away from his Richmond home, he said, "Not a bit, other than a little noise from the trucks at night."

But most were not happy with the news that the weapons might be moved. Richmond city commissioners quickly voted to bar chemical weapons from the city's roads and rail lines. On Friday, local officials sent a letter inviting Wynne to come to Madison County next month to explain what was going on.

On the floor of the U.S. Senate last week, Sen. Mitch McConnell accused the Pentagon of robbing the neutralization sites to pay for cost overruns at the incinerators. He said they would not be moved "so long as I am a U.S. senator."

"Mr. President, one of the first meetings I had as a U.S. senator 20 years ago was about the aging chemical weapons stored at the Blue Grass Army Depot in Richmond, Kentucky. At the time, the Army was ignoring the concerns of the community and attempting to incinerate the weapons irrespective of the potential risk.

"Not much has changed. ...

"After the time and energy I have expended on ensuring these weapons are disposed of in a safe and environmentally friendly manner, I am personally insulted by the department's efforts to delay destruction and its suggestion of transporting the weapons elsewhere," McConnell said.

If it gets built, the neutralization plant would create hundreds of jobs and countless spinoffs, fueling faster growth in a county where the population already is increasing rapidly.

Plans call for the depot's munitions to be disassembled and the nerve and blister agents removed, chemically decomposed and neutralized by caustic or water hydrolysis. The resulting chemical compounds, called hydrolysates, would be broken down into basic elements by a process called supercritical water oxidation -- something like a pressure cooker.

Bechtel Parsons Blue Grass, which would operate the plant, has halted construction work and hiring while the budget problem is sorted out.

There is some irony in Madison's situation. Back when incineration was the Army's sole disposal method, many residents argued that transporting the weapons was a better idea than incinerating them at the depot. Now, they're fighting to make sure they aren't transported.

But while some say the activists have simply delayed the destruction of the weapons, Williams disagrees. He said the safer technology is worth the fight.

"Had we not said a word," he said, "we'd still have nothing constructed over there."