for more information contact:
Craig Williams: (859) 986-7565
for immediate release: Tuesday, January 9, 2001
Central Kentucky residents voiced their opposition to the incineration of chemical weapons stored at the Blue Grass Army Depot in Madison County, at a public meeting held by the Army today in Richmond. Their message: safer, cleaner non-incineration methods should be used to destroy the chemical weapons in the interest of protecting public health and environment.
The Army held the public meeting as part of its requirement under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), to identify and assess alternative options for chemical weapons disposal, and to give the public opportunity to comment on the options demonstrated as viable under a separate Pentagon program. The Army's NEPA scoping process first began in 1986 presenting only three options 1) incinerate the chemical weapons locally; 2) incinerate the chemical weapons regionally or nationally; or 3) take no action.
Central Kentucky groups like Common Ground, Concerned Citizen of Madison County, and The Kentucky Environmental Foundation and many others have been advocating these safer disposal methods for over a decade.
Craig Williams, Director of the Kentucky Environmental Foundation in Berea, said "Today, central Kentuckians are finally getting an opportunity to review, evaluate and provide input on technology options that should have been part of the chemical weapons disposal process from the beginning. We intend to push for deployment of the safest possible approach until it is provided to the citizens of Kentucky."
The local fight against incineration has been fueled by operations of the Army's chemical weapons incinerators in the Pacific and Utah, which have experienced chemical agent releases out of the smokestack, permit violations, major system failures, a parade of whistleblowers, and at which workers have been exposed to chemical agents.
Tracy Powell-McCoy, Richmond resident and middle school science teacher, asked "Why would anyone want to put such a contraption as an incinerator in such a fast-growing, yet still heavily agricultural area, when alternatives exist that contain the by-products from the chemical weapons destruction process?" She continued, "This life-long Madison Countian, mother, teacher and Christian (aren't we supposed to be stewards of this land God gave us?) supports the destruction of the chemical weapons by an acceptable alternative, not incineration!"
Responding to these citizen demands for safer disposal technologies, Congress mandated a program to identify and demonstrate at least two non-incineration technologies for chemical weapons disposal. Under this program, called the Assembled Chemical Weapons Assessment (ACWA), two technologies have successfully passed demonstrations and another two are expected to be approves by the end of this month.
Peter Hille, Co-founder of Common Ground, said, "There is no need to build an incinerator here. We have alternatives now which can be implemented as soon or even sooner than incineration. It's time to close the door on old technology and move ahead with selecting a cleaner, safer alternative."
The Army will continue to accept written comments through February
2, 2001, and will then publish a DRAFT Environmental Impact Statement,
scheduled for release sometime this Spring. Citizens will have
45 days to comment on the DRAFT before a final decision on the
disposal technology will be made in March of 2002.
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