[PBARC] Chemical Arms Demolition Delayed

[WOLF, EARNEST G]

FYI -
glenn

Already more than $23 billion over budget and 13 years behind schedule, America's program for
destroying its stockpile of chemical weapons will now be delayed until 2012, at least. 

On Tuesday, the Pentagon announced that it had asked for international regulators' consent to miss
by three and a half years an April 2004 deadline to eliminate 45 percent of its blister and nerve
agent cache. 
What was left unsaid, according to government reports and Army sources, is the new final deadline:
2012, the last moment possible under the Chemical Weapons Convention. And even that date could slip.

"We're planning on finishing by 2012, presuming everything goes right for the next eight, nine
years. But you know as well as I that nothing 'always goes right,'" said Dick Sloan, a spokesman for
the Blue Grass Army Depot in Kentucky, where 523 tons of lethal VX and sarin are slated for
disposal, starting around 2006. 
At stake is more than just technical adherence to a treaty, arms analysts say. The rest of the world
is watching America's disposal efforts to see whether the United States is serious about eliminating
the planet's weapons of mass destruction. 

"U.S. delay only encourages delay by other (countries), notably Russia," wrote Barbara Hatch
Rosenberg, with the Federation of American Scientists, in an e-mail. 

"Russia has the largest stockpile in the world, over 40,000 tons of chemical weapons, and security
around them is not particularly tight," said Joseph Cirincione, who heads the nonproliferation
project at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "We had a chance to send a powerful
message to (Russia and) the rest of the world, to destroy these chemical weapons once and for all.
It's a shame we haven't picked up the pace and set an example." 
But picking up the pace has not been easy. At the moment, none of the military's disposal
installations are getting rid of any chemical arms, according to Army representatives at the
facilities: 
* A recently opened incinerator in Anniston, Alabama, is closed for the week for furnace
inspections. The facility has been shut down more than 20 percent of the time since it first started
firing in August. 
* An older incinerator, in Tooele, Utah, has been down since Sept. 4. The Chemical Weapons Working
Group claims that more than 75 alarms about escaped lethal agents have sounded in the last six
months alone at Tooele, which was closed from July 2002 to March 2003 after a plant worker was
exposed to sarin. 
* The chemical neutralization plant in Aberdeen, Maryland -- which began work in April -- has been
offline since Aug. 16, after air filters started to spew smoke. It won't return to full capacity
until mid-November. 

The Pentagon's efforts to reduce its chemical arms are in "turmoil," according to a recent report by
the General Accounting Office, Congress' investigative arm. Control of the disposal program has
changed hands within the military at least a half-dozen times. 
And now, even with the effort concentrated in a new Army group, the Chemical Materials Agency, "the
program continues to falter because several long-standing leadership, organizational, and strategic
planning weaknesses remain unresolved," the report said. 
At the same time, the Army's chemical demilitarization program, begun in 1985 with a proposed budget
of less than $2 billion, has ballooned to a more than $25 billion effort. And its original goal of
eliminating the United States' entire chemical stockpile by 1994 was abandoned long ago, said Jeff
Lindblad, a spokesman for the Aberdeen Chemical Agent Disposal Facility.
 
There have been some successes along the pothole-ridden road, however. The Tooele facility has
disposed of all its sarin. And the Army's first chemical incinerator, on the Johnston Atoll in the
Pacific Ocean, burned the last of its supply of blister and nerve agent in 2000. Overall, the
Pentagon claims it has destroyed nearly a quarter of its entire chemical stash. 

Missing the 45 percent deadline is at least partially the fault of environmental and community
groups, the Army and outside observers asserted. 

"Everybody wants to get rid of the stuff, but no one wants the government destroying it in their
backyards," said Gary Ackerman, a researcher at the Center for Nonproliferation Studies. 

"It took us seven years to get permits from state regulators," added Mike Abrams, who handles public
affairs for the Anniston incinerator. In early 2002, then-Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman filed a lawsuit
to keep the burner from firing up. He dropped the case only after the Army agreed to buy protective
gear for surrounding residents. 
Local activists near Pueblo, Colorado, convinced the Army to get rid of 2,600 tons of mustard gas at
a nearby storehouse by mixing it with other chemicals instead of torching it. A similar outcry in
the mid-'90s led the military to dispose of its mustard gas in Aberdeen, Maryland, with a
combination of very hot water and a little sodium hydroxide.
 
But even this cleaner approach, favored by green groups, has had its share of problems. The Aberdeen
facility has gotten rid of 52 tons of the agent. But it took 435,600 gallons of water to do so --
and that water is now itself contaminated. The toxic liquid is being treated at a DuPont plant in
Deepwater Point, New Jersey. 
The Chemical Weapons Convention, signed in 1997, demands that the 153 signing countries destroy
their chemical arsenals within a decade. Each country is allowed a five-year extension. But the
nations with the largest stockpiles -- the United States and Russia -- won't even make those
extended deadlines, outside observers long have predicted. 
"Chemical arsenals are more of a liability than an asset these days," said Ackerman. "You don't want
to have it around. It eventually breaks down. And then you have leaks." 

But environmental hazards are only one of a host of worries. 

"The sooner the remaining (chemical) stockpile is eliminated, the sooner we eliminate a potential
terrorist threat," Sen. Evan Bayh said last year. 

For now, however, it looks like "soon" is nearly a decade away.