In S. Jersey, plans for WMD seen as an imminent threat

Sunday, February 08, 2004

Some of America's weapons of mass destruction hide in plain sight.

In 1986, before the Cold War was over, Congress ordered the Department of Defense to destroy a 31,000-ton stockpile of chemical weapons, some dating to World War I.

Then in 1997 the United States signed an international treaty agreeing to eliminate chemical weapons.

Now, nearly two decades later, almost three-fourths of the original stockpile sits in depots spread across eight states. Efforts to destroy the poisons are years behind schedule and billions of dollars over budget estimates. The DOD concedes it will miss the 2007 deadline set in the 1997 treaty.

The military agencies created to eliminate the weapons have drawn fire from environmentalists and the wrath of congressional investigators who say the Army often fails to anticipate public opposition to various disposal plans.

Officials in New Jersey say the latest example of the Army's tin ear can be seen in a proposal to ship a neutralized byproduct of the nerve agent VX from an Indiana depot to Salem County for further treatment before it is released into the Delaware River.

The only warning of the plan was a single legal advertisement in a local Salem County newspaper the week before Christmas and a small notice posted in a local library. The letters "VX" did not appear.

"They are off on the wrong foot and then some," said Rep. Rob Andrews (D-1st Dist.), who represents a district farther north along the river. He says he resents the fact he had no answers for constituents worried about the plan, which remains under study.

People who live in the shadow of chemical weapons depots around the country say they are not surprised by what is happening in New Jersey.

"If one blurb in the paper is a public notice, then I'm a 21-year-old beauty queen," said Sara Morgan, a 62-year-old schoolteacher who fought plans to incinerate the VX near her home in Indiana. "The Army just keeps shooting itself in the foot. It's a wonder they can even walk anymore."

Morgan has questions about the fate of the nearly 1,300-ton stockpile at the Newport Chemical Agent Disposal Facility three miles from her front door. The Army, she said, has few answers.

Military officials say they're working to dispose weapons in a way that puts a premium on public safety and awareness.

"We have an open and transparent program," said Jeffrey Lindblad, a spokesman for the Army's Chemical Materials Agency. "We have been open and transparent about our program for many years."

He added that all weapons destruction occurs under the scrutiny of environmental regulators, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Research Council.

Since its inception, America's program to rid itself of chemical weapons has been at odds with people who live near the places where the deadly compounds are stored and where the Defense Department initially planned to burn them.

Public pressure helped derail plans to incinerate weapons in Indiana, Kentucky, Maryland and Colorado and contributed to delays in incineration operations in Alabama, Arkansas, Oregon and Utah.

The fight to push the Army to destroy the weapons in ways residents deemed safest turned people such as an Indiana schoolteacher, a carpenter from Kentucky and an architect in Alabama into environmental activists.

"From our vantage point, success means they haven't killed anybody yet and they're able to operate their facilities for a short time without a breakdown or regulatory failure," said Craig Williams, a former carpenter in Berea, Ky., who now heads the Chemical Weapons Working Group, a coalition of resident groups from communities where the weapons are stored.

"The whole thing is not a confidence-builder," Williams said. "Even for government work, it's remarkably dysfunctional."

Although the two Defense Department agencies assigned to destroy the weapons have made public participation in their plans a cornerstone of the program, people who live near weapons depots say dealing with the bureaucracy remains a challenge.

"To be fair, they've gotten a bit better because they've gotten burned by creating public uproar where there didn't need to be," said David Christian, an architect whose office in Anniston, Ala., is near a chemical weapons incinerator that began "test burns" in August in preparation for full-scale operations later this year. "But there's always a tendency for them to go back to the traditional way of doing things: We're the Army and we know best."

In Anniston, 35,000 people live within the "Pink Zone" -- a 9-mile radius around the weapons incinerator. All were issued duct tape and protective hoods by public health officials. There have been no reported releases of chemical agents into the atmosphere, as has happened at incinerators in Utah and on Johnston Atoll in the Pacific Ocean.

But Christian said uneasy Anniston residents want more information from the Army about any safety concerns that have arisen during the test burns.

"There's little information coming out," he said. "The sirens haven't gone off, and nobody in the community has had to mask up. But no news isn't always good news."

The task of eliminating the massive and far-flung cache of deadly weapons has been daunting.

"When these things were developed, they didn't think about how to get rid of them. It wasn't in their plan," Lindblad said. "The Cold War came and went and here we're stuck with Cold War relics."

Even critics of America's weapons disposal programs agree with assessments by the National Research Council and other experts that the greatest risk lies in not destroying the stockpiles as soon as possible.

Leonard Cole, a Rutgers University chemical and biological warfare expert, said the danger of doing nothing stems from a stockpile that has been plagued by occasional accidental releases of toxins and one that remains a ripe target for terrorists.

"If you're waiting for some of these agents to disintegrate themselves, you'll be waiting a century," Cole said. "We are better off trying to get rid of it, even if there are risks, no matter how small."

Progress in eradicating the stockpile has come slowly.

The General Accounting Office has drafted more than 20 reports over the past decade critical of the Defense Department management of the weapons disposal program, citing leadership turnover and delays caused by safety and environmental concerns as well as snags created by rocky community relations.

The DOD has said that in addition to failing to meet the 2007 deadline set by the International Chemical Weapons Convention Treaty for destruction of the weapons, it also may miss a five-year extension allowed by the treaty.

The GAO reports also noted cost overruns. The program, estimated to be $1.7 billion at its inception, was projected to cost $15 billion in 1998 and is now tagged at $25 billion.

Some lawmakers are losing patience.

"I'm frustrated by the political opportunism both within the Pentagon and throughout our nation's communities," Rep. Martin T. Meehan (D-Mass.) said at a hearing on chemical demilitarization in October. "And recognize that its fallout has led to one delay after another as we attempt to erase this residue of the Cold War and a possible Achilles' heel on our domestic security."

But public resistance to weapons-disposal projects continues.

The Army's plan to eliminate the VX stockpile in Newport, Ind., by first mixing it with water and sodium hydroxide to turn it into a compound called hydrolysate (pronounced hi-drol-a-sate) before shipping it to a commercial wastewater treatment facility is on hold.

In October, after widespread public protest and two lawsuits, the county government in Dayton, Ohio, refused to give an Army contractor a wastewater disposal permit to treat the hydrolysate (which the Army describes as caustic wastewater) and turn it into clean water before releasing it in the city sewer system.

The new proposal -- announced Dec. 19 with the legal notice -- called for trucking the hydrolysate to the DuPont Chambers Works plant in Deepwater, Salem County, for treatment before it is released into the Delaware River. The plant has already treated hydrolysate created by the destruction of more than 50 tons of mustard blister agent from the Aberdeen Chemical Agent Disposal Facility in Maryland. More than 1,500 tons remain in the stockpile there.

Following the outcry from public officials in New Jersey, the Army agreed to extend a public comment period on the proposal, which was to have ended on Jan. 19, by 60 days. But the public comment period is on hold while DuPont officials continue to test their ability to safely treat the hydrolysate, said Linblad, the Army spokesman.

"There's a lot of information people are requesting," he said. "A lot of it, we just don't have right now."

Andrews, the Camden County congressman, says he will demand proof from independent scientists that the final treated product will do no harm when it is released into the Delaware River before he'd even consider the proposal.

Rick Barnhart, mayor of nearby Pennsville Township, says his office hasn't been overwhelmed with phone calls about the nerve gas. "We've lived with DuPont for years. ... They treat a lot of chemicals, some of them worse."

Environmentalists such as Jeff Tittel of the Sierra Club may never be swayed.

"What they couldn't find in Iraq, they want to dump in New Jersey," Tittel said. "The Army has a lot of nerve."

Residents who live near the Indiana depot also oppose the plan to move the hydrolysate to New Jersey. More than 130 residents signed a letter sent to the Indiana installation's commander in December, voicing concerns about spills of the hydrolysate in transit. Although the compound itself is no longer VX, the hydrolysate is a corrosive liquid that could burn skin. Its fumes could also damage lungs.

Sara Morgan, the schoolteacher who can see towers on the Newport depot from her home, said she and other residents prefer a more expensive and time-consuming process that would destroy the VX entirely in the place where it's been stored for more than 40 years.

"I'm a Hoosier and an American who was raised with the golden rule," she said. "I wouldn't want that stuff shipped to me, so I don't want to see it shipped anywhere else."