CHEMICAL WEAPONS DISPOSAL

[Lenny Siegel <lsiegel@igc.org>]

CHEMICAL WEAPONS DEMILITARIZATION
COSTS SKYROCKET

While cleanup, environmental compliance, pollution prevention, 
and environmental technology programs deserve steady or 
increasing budgets, there is one large "environmental" program that 
deserves cuts, the skyrocketing chemical stockpile demilitarization 
program. This program, viewed as a threat to public health in the 
communities where incineration is supposed to take place, keeps 
growing and growing. The stockpile can be protected, stabilized, 
and monitored while research and development projects test safer, 
cheaper disposal practices, at a fraction of the program's current 
cost.

The following press release from the Chemical Weapons Working 
Group points out how out-of-control the demil program is.

Lenny Siegel

PRESS RELEASE: FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE January 
26,1995

Posting from Chemical Weapons Working Group

ARMY WANTS MORE TIME AND MONEY FOR 
DANGEROUS
EXPERIMENTAL CHEMICAL WEAPONS
INCINERATOR IN THE PACIFIC - CITIZENS PROTEST

At a time when Congress is talking about cutting public funding for 
public television, welfare, and education, and other public services 
to save money, it is business as usual for the U.S. Army Chemical 
Weapons stockpile disposal program and their financially 
dependent contractors.

For years the Army has claimed that its Johnston Island, JACADS 
chemical weapons incinerator in the Pacific has proven to be a 
successful model for eight proposed incinerators on the U.S. 
mainland. However, a recent permit modification application shows 
that this experimental incinerator has been shut down more than 
half the time since it opened due to design flaws, technical 
problems, and other malfunctions. When the plant opened in 1990, 
the Army said that the Johnston Island incinerator would complete 
its work by the summer of 1995, at a cost of $660 million. The 
military now wants to extend operations until 1999 and spend an 
additional $650 million. This reflects the Army's overall program, 
the cost of which has risen more than 600% in the last ten years to a 
current estimate of more than $10 billion dollars.

One system at JACADS, the Dunnage Incinerator, operated for only 
two days from June 30, 1990 through August 31, 1994 according to 
the permit application. The liquid incinerator, designed to vaporize 
chemical agent, did not operate on more than three quarters of the 
days in the same fifty-month period while the Metal Parts Furnace, 
which decontaminates projectiles and containers, was non-
operational more than eighty percent of the time.

Overall, no operations occurred at JACADS on 164 days in 1994, 
even under the Army's definition of an "operational day" as one in 
which hazardous waste was processed for at least one hour. The 
record was worse in 1990 and 1991 when no portion of the facility 
operated on more than half of the days of the two year period.

Despite JACADS poor operating history, former Secretary of 
Defense, Les Aspin certified that "prove out" of the equipment and 
facility at JACADS was completed in August of 1993. That 
decision has allowed construction of other chemical weapons 
incinerators to move forward, despite citizen protest.

Among the problems at JACADS which the Army permit 
modification request cites as reasons for the extension:
 -release of the chemical warfare agent GB into the atmosphere 
on two occasions, the most recent resulting in a nearly four month 
suspension of processing in 1994;
 - Jamming of the Deactivation Furnace System producing fires 
on two occasions;
 - Damage to a heating oven due to an explosion;
 - Munitions handling equipment problems which took two 
years to reduce to a "semi-acceptable level."

Leaders of the national movement advocating the development of 
safer alternatives for chemical weapons disposal site this as yet 
another example of the failures of the Army incineration program, 
"the ongoing failure of JACADS demonstrates that incineration is a 
bankrupt approach to eliminating the U.S. chemical weapons 
stockpile," said Craig Williams of the Chemical Weapons Working 
Group (CWWG). Williams lives near a chemical weapons stockpile 
in Richmond, Kentucky.

Meanwhile there are safer more environmentally sound 
technologies which could be developed for use on chemical 
weapons within 2-5 years, at a cost lower than that of incineration, 
such as: chemical neautralization, supercritical water oxidation, 
biodegredation, molten metals/molten salts, wet air oxidation, steam 
gasification, and electrochemical oxidation. The CWWG, a national 
coalition of citizens who live near these lethal weapons advocate 
that the Army abandon its incineration program and aggressively 
develop these alternatives. Citizens site concern about the public 
health risks of chemical weapons incineration, as their primary 
concern. The chemical weapons stockpile contains the some of the 
most lethal chemicals on the planet, and an accident at a mainland 
incinerator could prove lethal to thousands.

"The military-industry love affair, bound by contracts and promises 
of huge profits is apparently the major reason for the Army's 
continuing support of incineration," said Hayden Burgess of the 
Pacific Asia Council of Indigenous Peoples. "No permit should give 
the Army an open ended opportunity to conduct incineration."

Craig Williams concluded, "Congress should now force the Army 
to choose environmentally safe and fiscally responsible alternatives 
to demilitarize, and ultimately destroy, the chemical weapons 
arsenal."

For more information about the Army's proposed incineration 
project, and what you can do to stop it contact the Chemical 
Weapons Working Group at "kefwilli@acs.eku.edu" or P.O. Box 
467, Berea, Ky 40403. Phone: 606-986-7565.