Chemical agents
Army should stop resisting disposal safeguards

The United States will spend untold billions because Iraq was suspected of having weapons that could harm Americans.

Everyone knows there are weapons in Madison County that can harm Americans. So, naturally, the Army will spend a couple million dollars on technology to alert workers and neighbors if there's a whiff of sarin in the air, right?

Wrong.

As with almost every decision about how to dispose of the aging chemical arsenal, Kentuckians are having to fight for the safest alternative.

Most recently, U.S. Sen. Jim Bunning asked the Senate Defense Appropriations Committee to include $2 million for improved chemical monitors.

Better monitoring is needed because a work force of 800 people will soon be at the depot moving earth and building facilities to neutralize more than a million tons of some of the deadliest substances known to man.

Without the monitoring upgrade, it could take up to 12 hours to realize that a chemical agent has escaped and is drifting across the Blue Grass Army Depot.

The construction work will go on within a half-mile of the stored weapons. And once neutralization starts, the deadly stuff will have to be moved out of its protective igloos, greatly increasing the possibility of an airborne leak.

Accidents do happen. According to the Chemical Weapons Working Group, more than 30 workers became ill during construction of a chemical weapons disposal facility in Oregon in 1999 after they were exposed to a substance that the Army still says it cannot identify. Some of the workers continue to report symptoms consistent with exposure to chemical weapons.

And just last month, in Anniston, Ala., where the Army is operating a chemical weapons incinerator, VX agent was confirmed at the depot boundary, though, because of its crude monitoring system, the Army can't say how much VX.

It's ludicrous to think that hundreds of employees might be working near deadly substances without a system for immediately alerting them to leaks. But that seems to be exactly what the Army has in mind.

Faster and more sophisticated infrared technology is readily available and has been used to monitor chemical weapons sites in Iraq and the United States.

Fortunately, Sen. Mitch McConnell sits on the committee that has a big say over Army spending. So it's almost certain this modest appropriation for real-time monitoring will be included.

But just once it would be nice to see the Army do the right thing in regard to Kentucky's chemical weapons without being cudgeled into it.