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Tuesday December 09, 2003
What's expected to be a six-month process to receive a state health department permit to start destroying mustard agent munitions got started Monday night with a short public meeting outlining the procedure and permitting process.
No one in the crowd of about 60 people asked to speak after hearing presentations from Defense Department, Bechtel and state officials describing how the mustard agent will be destroyed and what's involved in getting a state permit.
The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment is empowered under the federal Resource Conservation and Recovery Act to issue the permits for Bechtel's destruction of 2,600 tons of chemical weapons.
The process, already two years past the deadline for destruction under an international treaty, is expected to take about 10 years and employ more than 800 people. It involves dismantling the explosive shells and mixing the mustard agent, a liquid above 56 degrees and a solid below, with hot water. The water mixture is then processed in sewer ponds by microbes that break the substance down into salt.
The Army originally wanted to incinerate the mustard agent, a process that would have been a lot harder to get through the permitting process. A meeting similar to Monday's was held more than a dozen years ago drawing only a handful of people. But afterward opposition to incineration mounted and the Army eventually agreed to use the water-based method that it's also used at the Aberdeen Proving Grounds in Maryland for bulk stores of mustard agent.
This time around, it's expected that the permitting process will go smoothly. Don Knappe, of the state health department, said that the entire process will take about six months, much faster than if the application was coming from private industry.
There actually will be three permits, a preliminary one for research and development followed by two modifications as data is supplied by the Army and Bechtel. That will come from experiments and engineering models now being produced by Bechtel and its subcontractors.
John McArthur of Bechtel described the environmental controls that will contain any air emissions inside the structures and minimize even exhaust from emergency generators and storm water runoff.
He said that the water used in the process will come from the Pueblo Chemical Depot wells and will be recovered and reused during the process.