CHEM WEAPONS: AN OPPORTUNITY FOR DISPOSAL

[Ross Vincent <ross.vincent@sierraclub.org>]

 Chemical Weapons Disposal: A Window of Opportunity for Pueblo

 Comments by Ross Vincent
 Chair, Environmental Quality Strategy Team
 to the 
 Rotary Club of Pueblo
 Pueblo, CO
 February 3, 1997

 Good afternoon! I'm from the Sierra Club and I'm here to help. 

Actually, I'm here to ask for help. We are moving inexorably closer to 
the day when final decisions will be made about how the chemical weapons 
at the Pueblo Chemical Depot are to be handled. Those decisions will 
have profound implications for the economic and environmental future of 
much of Southern Colorado. I think it's high time that we in this com-
munity got off of our collective duff and took charge of this situation. 
If we fail to do so, we will deserve no better than we get.

Fortunately, we have an opportunity over the next few months to exert 
extraordinary influence over the resolution of this apparently vexing 
set of problems. If we take advantage of the opportunity and do the job 
well, the substantial benefits we reap here in Pueblo could be repro-
duced elsewhere and might well have highly positive global repe cus-
sions. 

About 10% of the Nation's stockpile of "unitary" chemical weapons is 
stored at the Depot here. [Unitary chemical weapons, in case that isn't 
a familiar term, are the old WWI-style nerve and blister agent weapons.] 
The Army has been trying to figure out how to get rid of these things 
for at least a decade and a half, with limited success, at best. 

The baseline program, as the Army's favored solution is called, is more 
than a decade behind schedule and more than 600% over initial cost pro-
jections. Public opposition is substantial and growing. Frustration in 
the Congress with delays, escalating costs, and performance problems is 
high. And the impact of public opposition is just beginning. It's 
likely to get worse if it isn't addressed.

Fortunately, this cloud has a silver lining. There are ways to turn 
these problems into opportunities. And we in Pueblo are ideally posi-
tioned to take advantage of those opportunities. We can help the Army 
and the Nation to solve the chemical weapons disposal problem, using 
available methods that opponents of the current program will support, 
and we can do some good for ourselves and for others in the process. 
I'm here to enlist your support in helping to make that happen. 

The continuing saga of the Army's efforts to dispose of chemical weapons 
is almost soap opera material. It's sad; it's dramatic; and it seems to 
go on forever.

In the late '70s, our government announced unilaterally that we would 
discontinue manufacturing unitary chemical weapons. In the early '80s, 
the Congress authorized the Army to begin manufacturing more modern, 
"binary" chemical weapons -- munitions where two or more chemicals, less 
toxic and easier to handle than nerve and blister agents, are kept sepa-
rate in the projectiles until after they are fired. Then they combine 
to form the highly toxic chemical agent that does the damage on the bat-
tlefield. At the same time, the Congress directed the Army to get rid 
of the unitary stockpile.

By the mid-eighties, the Army had decided to destroy the existing wea-
pons at the sites where they are stored, rather than at centralized dis-
posal facilities (a good decision in my judgement). There are nine of 
these so-called "stockpile" sites, one in the Pacific and eight in the 
continental US. One of them is here. 

The Army also settled on incineration as the method-of-choice for elimi-
nating the stockpile. Incineration was controversial then; it is a 
cause celebre today. Once the method had been chosen, however, the Ar-
my's perception of its mission seemed to change. No longer was the ob-
jective destroying chemical weapons. The mission had become building 
incinerators. Until very recently, the Army has remained relentlessly 
focused on that redefined mission, in spite of the fact that it's now 
obvious that a number of better, safer options are available. 

Fortunately for us all, cooler heads with greater vision have recognized 
the political, economic and environmental benefits that some of these 
better, safer options can provide. Thanks to the leadership of a number 
of far-sighted people (including our own representatives in
both Houses of the Congress), the Army is now at a crucial fork in the 
road to ultimate destruction of chemical weapons. 

One fork leads us down the same, old, well-worn path, toward the con-
flict and delay that almost invariably attends attempts to deploy obso-
lete and controversial technologies. The other leads toward a range of 
options, around which I believe we can build a viable consensus about 
real, constructive solutions to this problem. By making the right 
choices now, we can substitute cooperation for conflict, we can send 
the message anew to the rest of the world that Puebloans are innovators 
and problem-solvers, we can hasten the day when the weapons east of town 
are gone and the Depot is truly available for productive re-use, and we 
can set a positive example that will facilitate the safe and effective 
destruction of chemical weapons world-wide. 

To pull this off, we will have to come together as a community. We'll 
have to focus on approaches that actually have a chance of working, and 
we'll have to persuade the Pentagon (and perhaps some of our neighbors) 
that the Pueblo Chemical Depot is the best place to demonstrate how well 
these better, safer methods can work. This community has risen to simi-
lar challenges before. We can do it again.

Thanks to the directives the Army has received from the Congress over 
the past several years, the Army's mission is evolving. We already know 
that at least four non-incineration technologies can effectively convert 
mustard agent (and other chemical weapons agents) to considerably less 
hazardous materials, not unlike those commonly used and produced in in-
dustry in many parts of the country every day.

About a year and a half ago, based on these congressional directives, 
the Army solicited proposals from private-sector technology developers 
who believed they could destroy chemical weapons AGENT safely and effec-
tively. I emphasize "chemical weapons AGENT" because, unfortunately, 
the Army chose to limit the testing to stored agent. Agent in munitions 
-- such as we have here -- was excluded. 

The Army received more than 20 proposals and selected three for super-
vised tests to determine whether the technologies could actually do what 
their proponents claimed. 

In addition, the Army's own researchers had been working on chemical 
neutralization processes for treating "non-stockpile" chemical weapons. 
These are the weapons that are NOT stored neatly at controlled unitary 
stockpile sites like the Depot -- the ones that are lost or buried, 
or that might be imported from other countries, or otherwise dealt with 
outside of the controlled circumstances associated with the official 
"stockpile". Same chemicals, different circumstances. The newer binary 
weapons are also considered to be "non-stockpile", at least for some 
purposes. If and when the international Chemical Weapons Convention is 
ratified by the Senate and becomes effective, all of these "non-stock-
pile" weapons will have to be destroyed as well.

Last April, in an effort to help us here in Pueblo get a better handle 
on what the alternative technologies had to offer, we invited the devel-
opers of all four of the methods under review by the Army to come to 
Pueblo for a day and a half of discussions about how their echnologies 
work. Some of you may have had a chance to sit in on some of those ses-
sions. It was apparent to me then, and I think to many others, that 
these methods ought to work on chemical weapons agents and, if they did, 
they would constitute a considerable improvement over the Army's pro-
posed baseline systems. 

It is important to recognize that none of these technologies is really 
new. They have all been used to process similar chemicals in other ap-
plications. But until last year, they had never been tried on actual 
chemical weapons agent. It's illegal for civilians to manufacture or 
possess these materials. The Army controls the supply and had previous-
ly been unwilling to make samples available to private sector operators 
for testing. 

Not surprisingly, all of the technologies passed the Army's tests with 
flying colors and the Army has now selected alternatives based on its 
own chemical neutralization methods for demonstration at two of the nine 
stockpile sites -- the sites in MD & IN, the two that have no
munitions, only agent in bulk storage. 

The Army's neutralization technique is pretty simple. It breaks down 
mustard agent in warm water. Some of the nerve agents require more ag-
gressive aqueous solutions and probably more significant post-neutrali-
zation treatment, but the technique works without significant air emis-
sions, the source of much of the controversy surrounding incineration, 
and without the risks that are inevitably associated with high-tempera-
ture combustion.

The down-sides for this approach appear to be its significant water re-
quirements - not a plus in this semi-arid area -- and the fact that it 
produces significant volumes of residual wastes that then have to be 
further treated before release. I've been invited by the Pentagon to 
observe a demonstration of this method later this month and I hope to be 
able to do so. 

One of the private-sector methods is based on steel-making technology, 
not unfamiliar to Puebloans. It works by introducing waste products 
into a molten metal bath. At the temperatures of molten metal, the 
metals melt and the waste molecules completely disassociate. Conditions 
in the bath can be controlled so the by-products that emerge from the 
top are potentially useful, low-molecular weight gases and other usable 
materials. Under the right circumstances, the developers maintain that 
they can destroy chemical weapons and other wastes with no unusable by-
products at all. I've had an opportunity to visit two sites where this 
technology is in use -- one an R&D site, the other an industrial scale 
facility -- and I am anxious to learn more about how this method might 
be applied to chemical weapons here in Pueblo.

I have not seen the other two tested alternatives in actual operation 
but they, too, appear to offer substantial advantages over the Army's 
baseline systems. I'm also anxious to know more about the approaches 
that these companies would recommend for the specific stockpile configu-
ration at the Depot. 

One is an electrochemical process, developed by the British Atomic Ener-
gy Agency, using off-the-shelf equipment and materials virtually identi-
cal to those used by the chlor-alkali industry around the world for dec-
ades. The agent is dissolved in an acid solution and passed
between the plates (or electrodes) of a series of electrochemical cells. 
A current is passed through the solution and the agent molecules are 
broken down into much simpler and less toxic materials.

The fourth option is a gas-phase reduction process in which the agent is 
reacted with hydrogen gas at elevated temperature to break down the 
agent molecules. 

We now know with certainty these methods work for treating chemical wea-
pons agents. Unfortunately, because of the way the Army designed the 
previous testing program, they have yet to be tried on assembled chemi-
cal munitions. That is what the new program mandated by the Congress 
last year is intended to do, with these and perhaps other technologies 
as well.

The newly appointed Program Manager for this effort visited Pueblo a 
couple of weeks ago. He seems to be starting slowly, but headed in the 
right direction. He wants our help in deciding which technologies to 
test, and how and where to test them. 

That's real progress. The old Army would have told us what was going to 
happen, whether we liked it or not. The new Army is asking for our help 
and guidance. It's imperative, I believe, that we take that request 
seriously, that we look carefully at the options and give the new Army 
good advice.

What do we gain by focusing on alternative technologies? Nothing less 
than a solution to the problem, I believe, and potentially a great deal 
more.

FIRST, we gain the opportunity to convert conflict into cooperation. 
The current program is plagued by serious controversy, persistent opera-
tional difficulties, and substantial cost overruns. It is a program go-
ing nowhere, based on a technology without a future. Alternative tech-
nologies offer a basis for cooperation that can turn this program around 
and earn it the support of its harshest current critics. Together 
works. The new Army is offering us an opportunity to try it. We must 
seize that opportunity before it slips away.

SECOND, we gain an opportunity to jump-start the chemical weapons de-
struction process here in Pueblo by offering the Depot as a site for one 
or more of the pilot demonstrations that the Pentagon will carry out in 
the foreseeable future. A pilot plant at the Depot will begin
the process of destroying weapons here long before any other approach 
could hope to start -- and, if it's designed well and works well, the 
pilot plant will be easily expanded into a full-scale operation far 
faster than we could deploy any full-scale operation here after it is 
tested somewhere else.

THIRD, we can shorten the time it takes to obtain required operating 
permits (typically 2-5 years for incinerators) by focusing on simpler, 
safer technologies that release fewer toxic substances from fewer re-
lease points into fewer media, and by increasing the confidence level of 
the regulators conducting the permit reviews by presenting a united and 
supportive constituency for deployment of technologies we agree on. 
Permits should come faster and easier with less complex, less controver-
sial treatment systems. 

FOURTH, we can probably help to reduce the cost to taxpayers of destroy-
ing chemical weapons, here and elsewhere. We won't know for sure how 
much these alternatives will cost until the pilot tests are well under 
way, but they should be considerably less expensive than the
baseline process, especially if the alternatives designers can simplify 
the process (as some of them should be able to do). 

Of course, the Army is still in a position to make these methods cost as 
much (and take as long to deploy) as they wish, but there are signs that 
many in the Army's leadership, and even more at the Pentagon and on Cap-
itol Hill, want to see this problem solved, as quickly and safely
and harmoniously as possible. Frankly, they tell us, they're growing 
tired of dealing with it. So are many of us.

In addition, by working together, we can save considerable amounts of 
money from other taxpayer-funded accounts if we can accelerate and sim-
plify the regulatory review process and eliminate the substantial costs 
associated with legal challenges and other forms of public
opposition.

FIFTH, we can convert a program that is currently pure expenditure, even 
if it works, into an investment of taxpayers' dollars in technologies 
with a future -- future applications in government and in the private 
sector, in this country and elsewhere -- investments with
reasonable prospects for return, maybe even for profits. 

No one else wants the baseline technology. The Russians have made it 
clear that they will not incinerate their chemical weapons and the only 
way other countries are likely to buy into the baseline approach is if 
we give it away. 

The U.S. government is the Nation's largest polluter by far and one of 
the world's largest markets for environmental technology. We should be 
investing our taxpayers' technology dollars in new and better ways of 
cleaning up the messes we have made, rather than simply spending those 
dollars on the outdated, expensive and relatively ineffective technolo-
gies currently in widespread use. 

 SIXTH, if we succeed in demonstrating new and better waste treatment 
technologies here (as I am confident we can) we will play a significant 
and highly visible role in introducing viable, more effective waste 
treatment technologies to a broader international market badly in need 
of them not only for chemical weapons disposal, but for other waste 
management applications as well. We will help to simplify and acceler-
ate the process of destroying chemical weapons worldwide. We will help 
to re-establish this Nation's leadership role in developing and deploy-
ing better environmental technologies. We will provide support and en-
couragement for those in the military, in the Department of Energy, and 
elsewhere who believe, as I do very strongly, that affected communities 
are indispensable partners in the selection and deployment of new indus-
trial technologies. We will provide hope for technology entrepreneurs 
and venture capitalists who are beginning to despair of ever breaking 
through the government procurement maze, so that they can make their 
better products available in the huge government market for environmen-
tal technologies. We could help to improve our country's balance of 
payments, and we would help to reduce the impacts of future waste man-
agement activities on public health and the environment.

And last, but far from least, we will send a message far and wide that 
Pueblo is a community that recognizes its problems and comes together to 
solve them -- that we are doers and innovators with the kind of global 
vision and commitment to the future that makes this an attractive place 
for people to live and work. 

Seems to me that's worth the effort. It's a tall agenda, but it's well 
within our reach. We can do it if we work together, in cooperation with 
the DOD's new Assembled Chemical Weapon Assessment Program, and with our 
counterparts in other stockpile communities, who have a stake in this 
process as well.

That's where I would like to see us take this effort in the weeks and 
months to come. I hope you agree. We'll need your help to make it 
work. 

I appreciate the opportunity to share these thoughts with you. I hope 
we'll be working together as we move forward with this important effort. 

===============
ROSS VINCENT is Chair of the Sierra Club's Environmental Quality Strate-
gy Team, the volunteer group responsible for coordinating pollution-re-
lated issues work for the Club at the national level. The Sierra Club 
is one of the nation's oldest and largest environmental organizations, 
with more than 13,000 members in Colorado and more than 600,000 nation-
wide.

He also chairs the Environment Section of the American Public Health As-
sociation, the world's oldest and largest association of public health 
professionals, and serves on the Colorado Chemical emilitarization Citi-
zens' Advisory Commission, authorized by the Congress and appointed by 
the Governor to advise the Army and the state on chemical weapons dispo-
sal issues. 

===========================================================
Ross Vincent ross.vincent@sierraclub.org
 Chair, Environmental Quality Strategy Team
 Sierra Club
 P.O. Box 4375 Pueblo, CO 81003-0375
 719-561-3117 719-561-1149 (daytime fax)
===========================================================