A new report says that U.S. law prohibits the only realistic option for meeting the 2017 deadline set by Congress for complete elimination of the U.S. chemical-weapon stockpile, Superfund Report reported yesterday (see GSN, May 15).
Demilitarization operations are under way or completed at most chemical weapons storage sites. However,
the Defense Department is still building disposal plants at two installations. Even with a potential $1.2 billion in supplementary funding that could quicken the pace of work in coming years, operations are expected to conclude in 2017 at the Pueblo Chemical Depot in Colorado and four years later at the Blue Grass Army Depot in Kentucky.
"There are no realistic options available to destroy the complete U.S. stockpile by the [Chemical Weapons Convention] deadline of April 2012," according to a Pentagon report to lawmakers. Also, "to achieve the congressional destruction mandate of 2017, only transporting portions of the stockpile to currently operating destruction facilities showed any reasonable probability of success, and this option is precluded by law."
Chemical agents cannot be legally shipped across state lines.
The Pentagon also plans to treat waste produced by chemical neutralization of warfare materials on-site at Blue Grass and Pueblo, rather than moving the material to a separate location for disposal, according to the report. That would be a victory for environmentalists and other activists, who unsuccessfully sought to halt the transport of hydrolysate from the Newport Chemical Depot in Indiana to an incinerator in Texas (see GSN, Feb. 11; Superfund Report, June 1).