April 26, 2001

In Colorado, a big decision
over chemical demil looms

by Jeff Schmerker
Staff Writer

Out in the Rocky Mountain foothills of southern Colorado, the Department
of Defense is wondering how to get rid of 2,611 tons of mustard agent.

The decision, which comes down to a choice of incineration or
non-incineration methods, will likely not be an easy one to make for the
agency or an easy one to swallow in the divided nearby community of
Pueblo.

But complicating matters further is the fact that the government is
actually proceeding with two separate environmental studies that could
place any of four disposal technologies in place in Pueblo, and those
two studies will likely be released at the same time, meaning interested
parties have hundreds if not thousands of pages of technical data to
wade through and comment on in a short 45-day remark period.
Furthermore, the two studies could come to similar conclusions or they
could contradict each other.

And hovering over all those worries is a looming and suddenly very real
international treaty agreement which says the nation must dispose of all
its chemical weapons by April, 2007.
"We need to start this process if we want to meet the 2007 deadline,"
said Greg Mahall, Aberdeen, Md.-based spokesman for the Program Manager
for Chemical Demilitarization.

The chemical agent stockpile at the Pueblo Chemical Depot, which is
eight percent of the nation's total and just one-fourth of the remaining
stockpile at Deseret Chemical Depot, is unique in part because it is
wholly comprised of mustard agent, a skin-eating chemical also stored at
Deseret Chemical Depot in Tooele County. The uniformity of that
stockpile means it could be well-suited to be handled by a
non-incineration super-critical water or biological disposal process, or
a modified incineration process, one of the kinds of technologies that
anti-incineration activists like the Sierra Club and the Chemical
Weapons Working Group have been hoping for since before the Tooele
Chemical Agent Disposal Facility went on-line in 1996.

Pueblo is one of two stockpile sites (the other is Blue Grass, Ky.)
which is being considered for an alternative technology, a handful of
which are being studied by the Assembled Chemical Weapons Assessment
program.

Whereas in Tooele, and before it, on Johnston Atoll in the Pacific,
chemical arms are cut apart and drained of agent, which is then burned
at very high temperatures and filtered until it is chemically benign,
the alternative technologies use water, bacteria or even electricity to
neutralize the agent into a relatively simple and landfill-quality
hazardous waste. The alternative technologies, say boosters, are as
efficient as incineration but environmentally safer because they do not
release effluent into the air. But the technology is still a relative
newborn, and does not yet have widespread confidence.

The alt techs, actually, would still need to have a pilot test facility,
similar to what the Johnston Atoll plant was for incineration, and
backers are hoping that facility will be built either in Pueblo or Blue
Grass.

But since the fallback from an alternative technology is standard
incineration, the Department of Defense is conducting two simultaneous
environmental studies for the two possible tracks, and hopes to release
them both on May 4.

The first study, being written by the Program Manager for Chemical
Demilitarization, will suggest whether incineration or a modified
incineration is best for Pueblo's stockpile. The second, penned by the
Assembled Chemical Weapons Assessment, will choose from one of the two
non-incineration methods and suggest a pilot plant for it. If ACWA
determines that an alternative technology pilot plant should be built
adjacent to the Pueblo stockpile, the Department of Defense will choose
between the two technologies.

Which technology would be best for Pueblo has been an issue of debate
for years, and especially since 1999, when the Pueblo County Commission
and the Pueblo City Council both voiced favor for incineration, while
the Pueblo Chemical Stockpile Citizens Advisory Commission, several of
whom are also with the Sierra Club and Chemical Weapons Working Group,
voted for an alt technology.

Some activists in Colorado are afraid that the Army has already
internally decided that an incineration facility will be built in
Pueblo, and they point to a leaked memo which they say indicates bias
toward burning and away from a more objective decision-making process.

That memo, they add, violates the federal law known as the National
Environmental Policy Act which requires federal decision makers to
examine and to disclose in advance the likely impacts of major decisions
they are about to make and to evaluate reasonable alternatives prior to
making those decisions. The results of these analyses must then be
published for public review in an environmental impact statement.

"The trail of internal Army documents and both public and private
statements by Army officials is really disconcerting," said Charlie
Skidmore, a union organizer in Pueblo.

Though defense officials dismiss the memo as an inconsequential internal
letter, activists in Pueblo nonetheless are worried about the impact
incineration would have on their community.

Dan Hobbs, a farmer in Avondale, the community closest to the depot, and
founding member of the Boone-Avondale Citizens Alliance, says he
suspects local markets will stop buying the garlic he grows if the Army
burns the mustard agent. Though the dangers of incineration may be more
imagined than real, "I believe it even if there is not a biological
threat to plants and livestock there is a perception that it is damaging
to our livelihoods out here. The consumers are saying, 'I,m not going
take any chance, why eat that stuff?'"

And as opposed to the wide open expanses around the Tooele Chemical
Agent Disposal Facility, the proposed site of the Pueblo burner is just
miles from an elementary school, encroaching development, and the
100,000 residents of Pueblo.

Larry Howe-Kerr, the director of the Office for Social Justice and the
Human Development Commission at the Diocese of Pueblo and a member of
Better Pueblo, a social issues organization, said he has heard that PMCD
might try to release its environmental study before ACWA's comes out,
presumably to get a leg up on the competition.

"That would be relatively problematic," he said.

Howe-Kerr says the Army is placing too much emphasis on incineration
since that is where most of the testing and proven track record has
been. But such a dependence, he says, is wrong.

"We know what these technologies can do," he said of the alternative
methods, many of which were tested at Dugway Proving Ground and the
Chemical Agent Munitions Disposal System, "and I have more trust in the
neutralization technology. It is not rocket science. It is incredibly
simple."

Others were more up front.

"Any form of trying to burn this material we would heavily protest,"
said Hobbs.

"I don,t see how they can choose incineration for Pueblo without
inviting an expensive and time-consuming legal battle," said Anne Cain,
chairwoman of the Pueblo-area chapter of the Sierra Club's Conservation
Committee. "That would mean more cost overruns and more delays and
they claim that their major concerns are cost and schedule."
Mahall said that activist involvement on the citizens committee could be
clouding the issue for less-involved local citizens, whose primary
concern is the elimination of the stockpile, not a debate over the best
way to do it. Commission members who are also on the Sierra Club or
other enviro groups amounts to wearing invisible hats," he said.

"What the public wants to see is action," he said. "They are interested
in the reuse of the facility, in revitalizing the community through the
reuse of the depot."

Once the studies comes out, groups like Hobbs, Boone-Avondale Citizens
Group will take the report and assign different chapters to different
members, who will read and study it, then report back to the entire
group, who will then decide how and what to comment on for the final
record of decision, which could be made as early as September.

Mahall says concerns that PMCD has already made up its mind are entirely
unfounded.

The double report release is better than releases one at a time, said
Howe-Kerr, but still makes things tough.

"Our main thing is we want some process where the public can participate
as much as possible," he said. "We are looking at two 1,000-page
documents. We have to go through that and be able comment on it."

Has the Army already made up its mind?

"It depends on who is in control. It could be tilted but it is really
confusing. It is an awkward and problematic process. I am afraid
there has been a rush to judgment, and that they will go
with incineration because it is quicker. It unfortunately boils down to
politics."