Army briefing pushed back for chemical weapons study
By Ryan Garrett/Register News Writer

An interim briefing about a study examining the possibility of transporting more than 500 tons of chemical weapons from the Blue Grass Army Depot to an incinerator in another state has been pushed back several days.

The Army's Chemical Materials Agency (CMA) technical assessment team will now brief Department of Defense officials on the study's progress Tuesday rather than today.

In a memo dated Jan. 10, Patrick Wakefield, deputy assistant to the undersecretary of defense for chemical demilitarization and threat reduction, requested the preliminary report.

The agency, which is responsible for storing and disposing of the country's aging chemical weapons stockpile, will present a full briefing March 21 to Michael Wynne, acting undersecretary of defense for acquisition, technology and logistics.

Along with transportation, CMA is studying several other options intended to allow the country to meet an international treaty deadline of 2012 for destroying the nation's entire chemical weapons stockpile while facing budget cuts and cost overruns at other sites.

CMA also is considering possible revised technical approaches such as removing explosives from the munitions and potential updates to its policies and procedures to precisely define the actual point of chemical agent destruction, according to a CMA press release.

In the meantime, delegations from Kentucky and Colorado, home of the Pueblo Chemical Depot, are working to restore funding to the demilitarization effort and prevent the study of the transportation option.

They also are trying to ensure that money appropriated for Blue Grass and Pueblo is spent where it was meant to be.

"I am concerned with the Department of Defense's decision to redirect funds appropriated for the safe disposal of the chemical weapons at the Blue Grass Army Depot to other projects," Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said in a recent statement.

"This decision is unacceptable, and I have made sure that officials at the department know this is a problem involving the safety of Kentucky citizens and it must be resolved," he said.

In a statement released Thursday, Kevin Duvall, acting director of the CMA's cooperative threat reduction support directorate, said the schedule change for the briefing was made to accommodate participants' availability.

"We intend to provide the Defense Department with a status report and details on the options we are reviewing," said Duvall, who is also the lead for the assessment.

"Our main objective is to receive further guidance from the Defense Department as to what parts of our assessment are viable, what parts are not, and just what direction the assessment should take as we go forward," he said. "We want to stress that the safety of our workers, our communities and our environment remains our top priority while conducting this assessment."

In his statement, Duvall emphasized that it is premature to discuss where the options studied in the assessment might lead.

"Once we have received further direction at the Feb. 22 meeting, we will then refine the assessment and move toward presenting the findings to Mr. Wynne on or about March 21," he said.

Ryan Garrett can be reached at rgarrett@richmondregister.com or at 623-1669, Ext. 234.