Posted on Wed, Nov.
22, 2006
Depot may have WMDs until 2023
PENTAGON PUSHES BACK DESTRUCTION
By Cassondra Kirby
CENTRAL KENTUCKY BUREAU
RICHMOND - Madison County might not be rid of its weapons of mass destruction until 2023 or later, according to new Pentagon budget projections.
The news did not sit well with county officials, who held a news conference yesterday to protest the delay.
"The longer that these chemicals are here, the harder my job is," said Carl Richards, Madison's emergency management director. The older they get, "the harder to monitor and the harder to keep safe they become," Richards said.
In Washington, U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said he was disappointed that the Pentagon was "backsliding" on its commitment to destroy the stockpile of chemical weapons.
More than 500 tons of deadly nerve agent and skin blistering agent are stored at Blue Grass Army Depot, a few miles from downtown Richmond. Plans call for a $2 billion plant to be built at the depot to chemically neutralize the weapons.
Officials have projected that the Blue Grass facility 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 only about half that amount. If the budget is adopted in January, the Blue Grass facility would receive $875 million from 2008 to 2013, according to internal Pentagon documents obtained by the Chemical Weapons Working Group.
The reduced funding would slow construction of the plant, which is just beginning, and would most likely mean that fewer skilled chemists, engineers and control-room operators could be hired to run it. And instead of working seven days a week to destroy the weapons quickly, the plant would operate only about four days.
Under these conditions, it would take workers about six years to destroy the weapons once they begin, instead of two to three years.
Critics say the Pentagon is spreading the project out over more years to free up money to spend on other priorities now.
"It's purely financial," said Craig Williams, director of the Chemical Weapons Working Group, a Berea-based coalition of citizen groups from stockpile sites.
Pentagon spokesman Chris Isleib said the delay is the result of several factors, including unexpected emerging costs and challenges in developing the facility and testing the process that will be used to destroy the weapons.
He denied that other priorities, such as the war in Iraq, have drained money from the destruction effort.
"Chemical weapons disposal is something we are really committed to, but something we need to do safely," Isleib said. "We want to do it in such a way that works for the environment, works for the local people and works for the people working with the stuff. It's something we take very seriously."
But McConnell noted that the plan "would subject the people living near the Blue Grass Army Depot to the dangers of chemical weapons until well into the 2020s."
"I am going to continue to lead the fight to ensure that these heinous weapons are disposed of in a safe and timely manner," he said in a statement.
Richards, the emergency management director, noted that some of the weapons will be nearly 100 years old before they're destroyed. And as the weapons age, the stability of the chemicals becomes more questionable. The highest risk to the community is not in disposing of the chemicals, but in storing them, Richards said.
There have been nearly a dozen leaks at the depot in recent years. No one was injured in those incidents.
And while slowing work might save the Pentagon money now, it will cost more in the long run because of security and maintenance costs, critics say.
"This proposal goes in exactly the opposite direction of what we have been trying to achieve," said Doug Hindman, chairman of the Kentucky Chemical Demilitarization Citizens Advisory Commission. "It increases the costs and it slows down destruction of the weapons. It's ridiculous."
Citing recent statements made by Congress and outgoing Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, many of those at the news conference said they had thought government officials considered funding for the plant a top priority. They said they were "blind-sided" by the Pentagon's new plans.
With slightly more than 40 percent of its stockpile destroyed, the United States is behind schedule in its efforts to comply with an international treaty. That treaty sets a destruction deadline of April 2007, with a possible one-time extension to April 2012.
In an April letter, Rumsfeld assured members of Congress that he would continue to request resources needed to destroy the weapons as close to April 2012 as possible.
"But what does the Pentagon do? Williams said yesterday. "They send back a budget that says we are going to sit on this an extra eight years. This just flies in the face of what everybody is saying needs to be done in regards to this issue."
Failure to comply 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.
But it isn't the treaty that worries people in Madison. They're more worried about the threat of having thousands killed, Williams said.
He said the Blue Grass facility has more than 70,000 M55 rockets loaded with nerve agent.
The rockets pose the biggest risk in the stockpile, 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."
Reach Cassondra Kirby in the Richmond bureau at (859) 626-5878 or ckirby@herald-leader.com.