Article Last Updated: 04/15/2005 12:50:22 AM

Blister Weapons: Pentagon should give up shipping mustard weapons to Utah Editorial

Like a dog on a bone, the Pentagon won't give up the idea of moving mustard weapons from Colorado to Utah for destruction. Never mind that Congress passed a law in 1994 that prohibits moving these weapons across state lines, and the U.S. Senate delegations of both states oppose the move. That should be enough to deter the Pentagon, but it insists on studying the idea. The reason, according to Undersecretary of Defense Michael Wynne, is so that Congress knows all its options to meet a treaty deadline in 2012 by which the United States is supposed to have destroyed all its chemical weapons. The treaty deadline is part of the story, but saving money is the other. It might be cheaper for the Army to ship the stuff to the Deseret Chemical Depot near Tooele for incineration than to build a chemical neutralization plant near Pueblo, Colo. But safety hazards inherent in   moving the stuff make transportation across Utah and Colorado a bad idea. That's why the Army decided in 1987 to destroy its chemical weapons on site at the eight depots in the continental United States where they are stored. That's still the safest strategy. Utah has done more than its part in this effort. Before the campaign to destroy these weapons began, this state had the dubious honor of playing host to 44 percent of the nation's chemical   weapons arsenal in Tooele County. The Army built a $400 million incinerator there, and, since 1996, it has burned 54 percent of the original stockpile and 88 percent of the munitions. That includes the entire inventory of GB nerve agent, and officials expect to burn the last of the VX nerve agent weapons by the end of June. Then they will move on to GA weapons. The big furnace will be adjusted to burn blister agent, commonly called mustard, about a year   from now. The schedule calls for finishing off the last of the mustard sometime in 2007. The Army has built incinerators at three other depots in the lower 48 and chemical neutralization plants at two others. But nothing has been done at Pueblo. Planners in the Pentagon might be thinking they could send the Colorado mustard weapons to Utah for incineration after 2007 and still meet the 2012 deadline. But that would once again make Utah a national environmental sacrifice zone. And that's too high a price for Utahns to pay.