State joins global weapons debate
Chemical stockpiles must be destroyed, but where, and how?

By CRIS BARRISH
Staff reporter
04/14/2004

In Russia, military officials once proposed mixing waste from destroyed chemical weapons with tar and using the material to fill road cracks, but backed off because runoff could contaminate groundwater.

The U.S. military once sought to incinerate millions of poison-filled rockets and the rest of its chemical arsenal, but toxic releases at incinerators in Utah and tiny Johnston Atoll in the Pacific fueled criticism and lawsuits from environmental and civic organizations.

The Pentagon's newest strategy is to mix the lethal chemicals with hot water and caustic soda to treat the waste. The military calls this a safe and effective method, but that plan has run into trouble, too.

The Army's current plan to send wastewater from the neutralization of 1,269 tons of the nerve agent VX stored in Indiana to the DuPont Co.'s Chambers Works plant has run into critics who call it a risky chemistry experiment. Some environmental groups, regulators and politicians in Delaware and New Jersey say the Delaware River should not be the dumping ground for chemical weapons created 750 miles away.

If the project is approved for Chambers Works, which last year began treating waste from mustard gas stockpiled in Aberdeen, Md., some lawmakers and residents fear even more waste from the U.S. stockpile could end up in the Delaware. The plant is in Deepwater, N.J., just across the river.

The controversy illustrates the dilemma the United States and Russia face while struggling to carry out an international treaty to eradicate more than 150 million pounds of chemical weapons - enough to kill all of mankind. All sides want the weapons destroyed, but the financial, technical, environmental and political challenges have proven formidable.

"The Army is damned if we do and damned if we don't," spokesman Jeffrey D. Lindblad said. "If we build an incinerator, the citizens against incineration will file a lawsuit. Folks don't want us to do neutralization and shift the waste elsewhere. And if we don't do anything, the U.S. is in violation of the treaty and we end up getting a black eye internationally."

State Rep. Greg Lavelle, R-Sharpley, said the military's problems should not be passed to Delaware. "The people have spoken, and I hope the Army will listen," Lavelle said.

Paul Walker, a director at Global Green USA, a nonprofit group that advocates safe weapons disposal, said the Army must address citizen concerns. "Destruction must be a win-win for all sides," he said, "not a zero-sum game in which local communities are on the losing side."

Army and DuPont officials said discharging the treated waste into the river would not harm people or aquatic life. They point out that there was no outcry when Chambers Works last year began treating Aberdeen's waste, and said it remains highly unlikely the plant would treat waste from other sites.

Still, both houses of the Delaware Legislature passed resolutions opposing the plan this month, and the governors of both states urged the Army to dispose of the waste in Indiana. On the day the governors acted, DuPont said it would await a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study of risks before accepting the Army's offer. That review could take months.

76,000 tons of weapons

The chemical arsenals are relics of the Cold War.

Both the United States and the Soviet Union already had mustard gas and other chemical weapons from World War I, when several countries unleashed 125,000 tons of the poisons, killing 90,000 soldiers and injuring thousands more.

During World War II and through the 1950s, the Americans and Soviets developed large amounts of more powerful nerve agents such as VX and sarin, which destroy nerves that control breathing and other vital functions. They can cause paralysis and death in minutes.

By the 1980s, international pressure began building to eradicate them. In 1997, 87 nations ratified the Chemical Weapons Convention, the world's first disarmament pact for a weapons class. Now ratified by 162 nations, the pact calls for their destruction by 2007.

Six nations have declared they possess a total of 76,000 tons. More than 99 percent were in Russia and the United States. Russia declared more than 44,000 tons at seven sites, and the United States reported 31,500 tons at nine sites.

The other nations that declared stockpiles were India, South Korea, Albania and Libya. Global Green's Walker and other experts suspect North Korea, Iraq, Israel, Syria, Lebanon, Egypt and Somalia have stockpiles.

Pace of destruction slow

But destruction efforts, estimated to cost $25 billion in the United States and up to $11 billion in Russia, are behind schedule. Russia has destroyed about 1 percent of its arsenal, and the United States, 28 percent.

Peter Kaiser, spokesman for the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, the Netherlands-based agency monitoring disarmament, said the challenges are daunting.

"You have to prove irreversible destruction of some of the most toxic substances ever created. It's expensive, and there's all sorts of different national regulations that specify the level of toxicity that can still be released into the atmosphere," Kaiser said.

The United States and other nations have pledged money to help impoverished Russia begin its work. In the mid-1990s, Russian officials rejected a U.S. offer to build an incinerator.

"They said the incineration process was expensive and complicated and too high maintenance and too controversial," Walker said.

Russia decided to use a caustic soda to break down its weapons and mix the waste with tar, then spread it on roads. Tests showed that toxic and possibly carcinogenic chemicals could leach into drinking water supplies, Walker said.

"So they decided to put it in a toxic landfill, in barrels that are kept in sealed storage bunkers" in mountainous areas, Walker said. "But their progress is way behind the curve."

Incinerators opposed

The U.S. Army decided incineration would work best at its nine depots - in Maryland, Utah, Kentucky, Alabama, Arkansas, Oregon, Colorado and Indiana and at Johnston Atoll.

The Johnston Atoll, a cluster of coral islands about 700 miles from Hawaii, became the incineration test case. Its depot contained 2,031 tons - 6 percent of the U.S. total.

All were destroyed by 2000. The incinerator had three toxic releases into the atmosphere, Army officials said, describing them as microscopic amounts that posed no danger. In one incident, however, a worker suffered third-degree burns after mustard gas, which is actually a liquid, splashed on his leg, Army spokesman Gregory J. Mahall said.

Johnston Atoll is in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. The Army's incinerator in Tooele, Utah, about 35 miles from heavily populated Salt Lake City, generated controversy from the outset. The Tooele depot held 13,616 tons, 43 percent of the U.S. stockpile.

Since it began burning in 1996, the incinerator has had one toxic release of sarin into the atmosphere - described by the Army's Mahall as half the size of a teardrop - and several other equipment malfunctions, resulting in long shutdowns. Mahall said one worker was treated for exposure to diluted sarin that got in his hair.

State regulators said they have cited the plant numerous times for environmental violations, such as failing to label hazardous waste containers or not reporting hazardous releases. The violations have resulted in more than $350,000 in fines.

Jason Groenewold, director of Families Against Incinerator Risks in Tooele, which had a federal judge rule against its lawsuit to shut down the incinerator, said his group is frustrated.

"We've been trying to figure out what it's going to take, but there's a body bag standard in place. Until someone dies, nothing will happen," he said.

Despite the numerous fines, Utah regulators said the incinerator is safe. About half of the stockpile has been destroyed.

"The plant works," said Scott Anderson, a manager at the Utah Department of Environmental Quality. "It's successfully and effectively destroying the agent. There's absolutely no danger to the public."

Last year the Army opened an incinerator in Anniston, Ala., which had 7 percent of the arsenal. Officials plan to start burning this summer at new incinerators in Umatilla, Ore., and Pine Bluff, Ark.; each site has about 12 percent of the arsenal.

Rufus Kinney, a college English teacher in Alabama and a member of Families Concerned about Nerve Gas Incineration, said his group unsuccessfully fought the incinerator.

"Imagine having a facility putting out all these poisons, even though in small amounts, 24 hours a day, seven days a week for 10 to 12 years," he said.

New approach embraced

Opposition to incineration led Congress in the mid-1990s to urge the Pentagon to explore alternative methods. The studies led the Army to choose chemical neutralization and on-site treatment at four depots: Pueblo, Colo., Blue Grass, Ky., Aberdeen, Md., and Newport, Ind.

The Pueblo community embraced the facility, which is being designed, said resident Ross Vincent, the Sierra Club's senior national policy adviser.

"We wanted the jobs and didn't want to dump our problem on somebody," said Vincent, a Wilmington native who worked at Chambers Works while a University of Delaware student.

But some Pueblo waste will be sent elsewhere. The solid sludge remaining after treatment would be shipped to a hazardous waste storage site, as would contaminated water, Army officials said.

The Army planned to destroy and treat the 1,625 tons of mustard gas at the Aberdeen Proving Ground, 35 miles from Wilmington. After the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, officials accelerated the process, fearing a catastrophe if a jet crashed into the stockpile. So instead of building a treatment plant at Aberdeen, it paid DuPont $30 million to treat the waste.

Truck shipments began in June 2003, DuPont spokesman Anthony R. Farina said. About 500,000 gallons of waste have been treated and discharged into the Delaware River.

Ohio's plan collapses

The Army turned to DuPont again early this year when plans collapsed to ship wastewater from Indiana's arsenal to Dayton, Ohio, where it would be treated and then discharged into the Great Miami River.

As in Aberdeen, the terrorist attacks had spurred the Army to speed up the disposal process in Indiana. A Dayton company was selected for the work, but the deal was canceled after residents fought the plan, an activist group sued and a county commission refused to issue a permit.

Army spokesman Lindblad said DuPont was a natural replacement because its Deepwater treatment plant is state-of-the-art and has the capacity. Despite fears from environmentalists that the waste could contain minute amounts of pure VX, Army officials insist neutralization destroys the poison.

"There's no risk to anybody," Lindblad said. "We're dealing with a caustic wastewater that DuPont and other firms deal with on a daily basis."

Still, Craig Williams, director of the Chemical Weapons Working Group, a nonprofit environmental group in Kentucky that monitors U.S. weapons destruction efforts, said the Army's latest choice faces long odds.

"There is a growing cadre of entities, citizens groups and regulators and politicians moving in the direction of opposing the shipment," he said. "That would make it very difficult for the Army to achieve its objective."

Reach Cris Barrish at 324-2785 or cbarrish@delawareonline.com.

U.S. Army video image

There are 1,269 tons of VX stored at the Newport Chemical Depot, in Newport, Ind.

D E S T R O Y I N G  C H E M I C A L W E A P O N S: T H E   D E L A W A R E  R I V E R D E B A T E A News Journal Special Report • For video, multimedia, online discussion and more information on the VX nerve agent.

"The people have spoken, and I hope the Army will listen," says state Rep. Greg Lavelle, R-Sharpley.

AP file

A Russian military official in 2001 showed off a type of warhead that the former Soviet Union armed with nerve agents.