Posted on Tues, Nov.
21, 2006
Blue Grass Army Depot faces further delay in destroying chemical weapons
By Cassondra KirbyCENTRAL KENTUCKY BUREAU
The effort to rid Madison County of its weapons of mass destruction might drag out until at least 2023, eight years longer than last projected.
Despite statements from Congress and former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld emphasizing the importance of quickly destroying the stockpiles of chemical weapons in Kentucky and elsewhere, the Pentagon has proposed drastic cuts in funding that would delay work at the Blue Grass Army Depot.
Officials have projected that Blue Grass would need about $1.72 billion over five years, beginning in 2008, to destroy the weapons by 2015, the most recent target completion date.
But the Pentagon has proposed funding only about half that. If the budget is adopted in January, the Blue Grass facility will receive $875 million from 2008 to 2013, according to internal Pentagon documents obtained by the Herald-Leader.
Among other things, the cuts would slow work on the $2 billion chemical neutralization plant, which is in its beginning phases of construction, and would most likely mean that officials will be forced to hire fewer skilled chemists, engineers and control-room operators to run the plant. Instead of working seven days a week to destroy the weapons quickly, the plant would be in operation only about four days a week.
Madison County officials held a news conference Tuesday to protest the delay.
"I've got one job, and that's to protect 80,000 people that reside here in Madison County," said Carl Richards, the county's emergency management director.
Richards noted that the weapons will be nearly 100 years old before they're destroyed.
"The longer that these chemicals are here, the harder my job is. As they get older, the harder to monitor and the harder to keep safe they become," he said.
With slightly more than 40 percent of its stockpile destroyed, the United States is behind schedule to comply with an international treaty that calls for all countries to destroy their chemical weapons by April 2007, with a possible extension to April 2012.
This latest slashing of funding means the Blue Grass Army Depot probably won't be rid of its chemical weapons until at least 2023.
Incinerators in Utah, Alabama and Arkansas aren't expected to complete chemical destruction until 2016, and a plant in Oregon won't be done until 2017. A plant in Colorado -- whose proposed funding also is being reduced -- won't be rid of its chemical weapons now until 2021.
Not complying with the treaty could mean sanctions involving trade agreements between countries or against a country's chemical industry. But action is not likely to be taken if the country is showing a good-faith effort to destroy its weapons, experts say.
More important than complying with the treaty, some say, is freeing communities close to the plants from the dangers of the aging weapons.
The Blue Grass Army Depot stores 523 tons of lethal nerve and blister agent, some of it since World War II, said Craig Williams, director of the Chemical Weapons Working Group, a Kentucky-based coalition of citizen groups from stockpile sites. He said the Richmond facility has more than 70,000 M55 rockets loaded with nerve agent.
The rockets pose the biggest risk, Williams said.
"The Pentagon -- based on this funding proposal -- is saying, 'We don't care about that risk,'" Williams said. "They are saying, 'You, Central Kentucky, you are going to have to sit on this risk an extra eight years because we don't want to fund the program to eliminate that risk.' That's outrageous."