Published: October
31, 2006
OUR VIEW
A milestone
Although no shovels were present and no ground was broken, a "ground-breaking" ceremony at Eastern Kentucky University Saturday marks a significant milestone in the prolonged effort to destroy the now-banned chemical weapons stored at the Blue Grass Army Depot in Madison County. It means that after years of foot-dragging the Bush administration is committed to building the Kentucky chemical weapons demilitarization facility to destroy the weapons on site rather than continuing to lobby for moving the weapons to existing incinerators.
The groundbreaking was in the ballroom of the Keen Johnson Building on the EKU campus, located miles from wehre the facility will be built. While actual construction has not begun, work has started on roads and utilities at the site.
Among those attending the groundbreaking were U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell. He used his considerable clout in the U.S. Senate to assure funding for the facility that will employ new technology at Blue Grass and another in Colorado. In so doing, he was fulfilling an assurance he made to residents that the weapons would be destroyed on site. That's clearly the approach residents favored after years of debate over how best to destroy the weapons stored far below the ground in Madison County.
Key members of the Bush administration supported the less costly but more dangerous approach of moving the weapons by rail to incinerators already built. Our fear was that the federal government would drag its feet to the point where it would be impossible to build the Madison County facility in time to meet a 2012 deadline to destroy banned chemical weapons under a treaty the U.S. signed. Thus, the government would have no choice but to transport the weapons to an existing incinerator.
That's not going to happen. The facility is being built at the Blue Grass Army Depot. The weapons will be destroyed safely and on time. The sooner the better.