Chemical-arms disposal lags in U.S.

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Ohio
NEWHOUSE NEWS SERVICE
Chemical-arms disposal lags in U.S.
Wayne Woolley
02/15/04

Some of America's weapons of mass destruction hide in plain sight.

In 1986, before the Cold War was over, Congress ordered the Defense
Department to destroy a 31,000-ton stockpile of chemical weapons, some
dating to World War I. Then in 1997, the United States signed an
international treaty agreeing to eliminate chemical weapons.

Today, almost three-fourths of the original stockpile is still here,
sitting in depots spread across eight states. Efforts to destroy the
poisons are years behind schedule and billions of dollars over budget
estimates. The Pentagon concedes it will miss the 2007 deadline set in
the 1997 treaty.

The military agencies created to eliminate the weapons have drawn fire
from environmentalists and the wrath of congressional investigators who
say the Army often fails to anticipate public opposition to various
disposal schemes.

Officials in New Jersey say the latest example of the Army's tin ear is
a proposal to ship a neutralized byproduct of the nerve agent VX from an
Indiana depot to Salem County in New Jersey for further treatment before
it is released into the Delaware River.

The only warning of the plan was a single legal advertisement in a Salem
County newspaper the week before Christmas and a small notice posted in
a local library. The letters "VX" did not appear.

"They are off on the wrong foot and then some," said Rep. Rob Andrews, a
New Jersey Democrat whose district is farther north along the river.
Andrews said he resents that he had no answers for constituents worried
about the plan, which remains under study.

"If one blurb in the paper is a public notice, then I'm a 21-year-old
beauty queen," said Sara Morgan, 62, a teacher who fought plans to
incinerate the VX near her home in Indiana.

Morgan has questions about the fate of the nearly 1,300-ton stockpile at
the Newport Chemical Agent Disposal Facility three miles from her front
door in Montezuma, Ind.

Since its inception, America's program to rid itself of chemical weapons
has been at odds with people who live near the places where the deadly
compounds are stored - and where the Defense Department initially
planned to burn them.

Public pressure helped derail plans to incinerate weapons in Indiana,
Kentucky, Maryland and Colorado and contributed to delays in
incineration operations in Alabama, Arkansas, Oregon and Utah.

Though the two Defense Department agencies assigned to destroy the
weapons have made public participation in their plans a cornerstone of
the program, people who live near weapons depots say dealing with the
bureaucracy remains a challenge.

This article can be viewed at:
http://www.cleveland.com/news/plaindealer/index.ssf?/base/news/107684250087830.xml

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