Napalm Shipment sent back to China Lake

[Center for Public Environmental Oversight <cpeo@cpeo.org>]

Napalm Shipment Will Be Sent Back to California
By Michael Becker

Summary

 A shipment of Vietnam War-era napalm in a Kansas rail yard will be
shipped back to California, says the Defense Department. The shipment
of jellied gasoline was headed for an Indiana plant but it was refused
and will be sent to a U.S. Navy weapons center in the Mojave Desert. The
napalm would remain at the China Lakes test ground 120 miles north of
Los Angeles until the Navy finds a contractor willing to recycle the 42
tons of napalm on the rail car

The napalm problem developed earlier this week when Pollution Control
Industries Inc. of East Chicago, Indiana, backed out of its $2.5 million
contract to recycle the material.
The shipment was the first in a series of transfers aimed at disposing
of all the napalm stored at the Navy's facility in Fallbrook,
California, north of San Diego.

The Indiana plant had planned to convert the napalm into fuel for cement
kilns. Members of Congress from the Chicago area, through which the
shipments would have passed, questioned the need to transport the
material two-thirds of the way across the
continent. Railroad officials said the substance carried a
low-to-medium-rated risk in shipping, far less than the propane it
transports on a regular basis, and the disposal plan had Environmental
Protection Agency approval.
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In a previous press release, Robert Pirie, assistant secretary of the
Navy, told CNN that sending the material back to California would only
be a temporary solution until the Navy could find a company to take the
material and start reprocessing it.

"We have a number of firms who were in the original bidding to do this
... and we will select one of the more qualified firms to do the
recycling of the material," he said. "It's really not dangerous at all.
We've gone out of our way to ensure the safety of the project.

"In fact, it's a good deal less dangerous than shipping ordinary
gasoline. ... It's very stable, not really a problem. The shipping is
done in special containers. It's one of safest projects of this kind
that I know about," he said.

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Tony Chenhansa
Brownfields Project Assistant
Center for Public Environmental Oversight (Formerly known as CAREER/PRO)

A program of the San Francisco Urban Institute
425 Market Street 2nd Floor
San Francisco, CA 94105
phone: 415-904-7751
fax: 415-904-7765
e-mail: cpro@igc.org
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