Richmond Register
12.21.01

DISPOSAL METHODS ARE NOT NEW

Dear Editor:

In your Dec. 16 editorial ("Key disposal players must commit"), you ask why it is only now that we are hearing about neutralization, rather than incineration, as the best way to dispose of the obsolete chemical weapons stored at the Blue Grass Army Depot.

The fact is that neutralization has been a viable and safer alternative to incineration for more than twenty years. You ask other questions, all critical of the neutralization technology: "Has it been tested on the scale needed for Blue Grass? Does it have a track record at all? Can the neutralized agent be safely shipped and still follow treaty guidelines?"

The answer to all these questions is "yes," and is abundantly supported by studies conducted by the Department of Defense, the General Accounting Office, and the National Academy of Sciences. The only reason that we are still talking about incineration is that seventeen years ago one branch of the Army decided that it preferred incineration, and has tried to downplay the remarkable advances in other, safer disposal technologies.

What we now have is a series of delays and astonishing cost overruns created not by citizen opposition to incineration, but by the flaws in the chemical weapons disposal program. In 1984 the Army announced that it could safely and efficiently destroy by incineration all the obsolete chemical weapons at Blue Grass and seven other storage sites by 1994, for a cost of $1.7 billion. Here we are in 2001, with the Army saying it' might be able to get the job done by 2016, at a cost of $24 billion.

The worst part of this is, not the inefficiency, or the amazing increase in the cost to American taxpayers, but the official unwillingness to face the fact that all this, has been in support of the wrong disposal method. By definition, incineration means that something is burnt off into the air, and no scientist and no document can guarantee that potentially lethal substances will not thereby enter the air that we breathe in Madison County and surrounding highly populated areas. In contrast, neutralization is what is known as a "nonemissive" technology, in which nothing deadly is emitted from smokestacks.

It is my hope that The Richmond Register will give additional thought to what disposal technology best protects its readers and all citizens of the Bluegrass region, and I would respectfully suggest that your readers consider voting for either of the neutralization options, rather than incineration, in your Online Reader Poll.

Charles Bracelen Flood
Richmond