KY State Legislature passes chem weapons bill

(Excerpted from the May 2000 issue of CWWG's newsletter "Common Sense")

On April 26, 2000 Kentucky Governor Paul Patton signedHouse Bill 579, a modification of an existing Kentucky Statute which has prevented the Army from moving forward with its plans to dispose of the chemical weapons stored at the Blue Grass Army Depot. Affected citizens have long objected to incineration of the munitions and to the Army's approach of limiting the community options to either incineration or doing nothing. The 1990 Statue was a result of citizen objections to their limited choices.

HB 579 opens up the possibility of deploying one of the advanced technologies that have been demonstrated viable for chem weapons disposal through the federally funded Assembled Chemical Weapons Assessment (ACWA) program. It allows Kentuckians to choose the safest and most protective of several destruction methods.

The bill also separates the storage aspect of the depot's chemical activity from the disposal phase. The way the 1990 Statute was written, storage and disposal were talked about as one and the same.

Representative Harry Moberly sponsored HB 579 which passed both the House and Senate unanimously. The bill's language was the work of representatives from a diverse group of interests, including KEF, the Army, the State Environmental Cabinet, the State Emergency Response folks, the Citizens' Advisory Commission (CAC) and other citizen groups. It was a collective effort over a time span of a year which reached agreement on all points within the bill through a consensus process modelled after the ACWA Dialogue.

Doug Hindman, co-chair of the Kentucky CAC commented concerning the bill, "HB 579 was true consensus legislation. With agreement among stakeholders, the bill breezed through the legislature without opposition. The new law makes it possible to build a chemical demilitarization plant in Kentucky while maintaining strong safeguards over the process."

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