Treaty also includes non-stockpile items

By Amy Riggin
OF THE COMMERCIAL STAFF

In addition to the Arsenal’s chemical weapons stockpile, non-stockpile items stored there also fall under the provisions of the international treaty. Disposal of stockpile and non-stockpile weapons are two separate programs, but both are managed by the Army’s Chemical Materials Agency.

Joe Daven, site manager for the non-stockpile disposal program, said there is often confusion differentiating between the two.

“Even when you say non-stockpile they think of the incinerator and that’s not the case here,” he said.

Non-stockpile items at the Arsenal include former production facilities, non-lethal binary chemical munitions components, recovered chemical warfare materiel and miscellaneous materiel.

Four percent of items classified as recovered materiel came in from other locations. The rest was uncovered on Arsenal grounds.

“We want to make sure that the people in the community do not think that non-stockpile is using the Pine Bluff Arsenal as a dumping ground for other facilities or other landfills,” Daven said.

“That’s not the case. We will keep as much out of the Arsenal as possible.”

He said most of the recovered items are mortars produced at the Arsenal and German rockets brought here during World War I and World Ward II for research and development. Those munitions contain mustard agent.

Daven said miscellaneous items include empty ton containers, the majority of which were brought here from Huntsville, Ala., in the late 1940s.

The Arsenal’s Integrated Binary Production Facilities, which produced binary precursor chemicals and binary munitions, are almost completely demolished. Daven said there is one building left standing, which is being used to destroy the chemicals, DF and QL.

“There are more stockpile items by far,” said Randy Long, the stockpile disposal facility’s site project manager. “The stockpile items are essentially in new condition. … They were manufactured by the United States and they’re going to be demilitarized by the United States.”

In contrast, there are limited quantities of non-stockpile items stored at the Arsenal that have “varying origins of manufacture.”

“Some of them have been buried for a period of time so they are in varying degrees of condition,” Long said. “You have to assess each non-stockpile item on its own merit, which lends itself to a more manual, slow process.”

Even so, Daven said the non-stockpile program is on track to destroy all of its items – using various methods of disposal, including mobile systems -- by 2007.