Pine Bluff Commercial
July 14, 2003

Binary agent facilities at Arsenal scheduled for destruction

BY SCOTT LOFTIS/OF THE COMMERCIAL STAFF

In the final days of the Cold War between the United States and Russia, the U.S. began construction of a new kind of military production facility on the grounds of the Pine Bluff Arsenal.

The facilities were designed to produce binary chemicals and fill binary chemical munitions. The munitions were designed to mix two non-lethal chemicals to form a lethal chemical agent while in flight.

But the U.S. never used binary munitions on the battlefield, and by 1991 construction on the Pine Bluff facilities had stopped as a result of an agreement between former President George Bush and former Russian President Mikhail Gorbachev.

Now, American officials are preparing to dismantle the construction facilities as part of the Chemical Weapons Convention, a multilateral agreement ratified by the U.S. in 1997.

On Monday, officials associated with the project outlined plans to destroy the facilities beginning in October. The facilities are slated to be destroyed by April 2007.

The binary production facilities at the Arsenal consist of three separate plants - one designed to produce the binary precursor known as QL (diisopropyl aminoethylmethyl phosphonite), another to produce DC (methylphosphonic dichloride) and a third to produce DF (methylphosphonic diflouride).

None of those chemicals is lethal by itself, and only DF was ever actually produced at the Arsenal, where it was used to fill M20 artillery canisters.

A $7.4 million contract to destroy the production facilities was awarded this spring to Stone & Webster Inc., a part of Louisiana-based international conglomerate The Shaw Group.

The destruction will occur in three phases, starting with the QL facility in October. The DC facility will be destroyed beginning in April 2004.

The DF facility, which was 85 to 90 percent complete when construction was halted in 1991, will be converted into a chemical destruction facility to destroy the binary precursors stored at the Arsenal. Once those chemicals are destroyed, the facility itself will be demolished, beginning in October 2004.

None of the debris from the destruction will be contaminated, according to Joe Daven, the field office manager who conducted Monday's presentation. The contractor will recycle a portion of the steel, and other debris will be transported to a local landfill.