WASHINGTON -- Funding for preparation of the last two U.S. installations set to begin destruction of their chemical weapon stockpiles received a significant boost in the fiscal 2010 budget -- roughly 30 percent over last year's allowance (see GSN, July 22, 2009).
(Jan. 26) -
U.S. 155-millimeter chemical munitions, shown in storage at the Pueblo Chemical Depot in Colorado. The Obama administration increased fiscal 2010 funding for chemical-weapon destruction operations at the depot and another site in Kentucky (U.S. Army Chemical Materials Agency photo).
The major appropriations hike comes as Washington looks to demonstrate to the international community that it is maintaining a good faith effort to finish destroying its chemical arsenal soon as possible, even if there is no chance of meeting the Chemical Weapons Convention deadline of April 2012.
The Defense Department’s Assembled Chemical Weapons Alternatives program received $550 million in fiscal 2010, which began on Oct. 1 of last year. Funding was fully set only last month.
The ACWA program is in charge of munitions destruction operations at the Pueblo Chemical Depot in Colorado and the Blue Grass Army Depot in Kentucky. The U.S. Army Chemical Materials Agency has conducted disposal work at the remaining seven other stockpile sites.
To date, the Pentagon has destroyed more than 70 percent of the country's original declared arsenal of 31,500 tons of chemical warfare materials. Stockpiles at Pueblo and Blue Grass represent 10 percent of the stockpile and are respectively expected to be destroyed by 2017 and 2021-- meaning both would miss the already-extended international disposal deadline and the Kentucky site would continue operations past the congressionally mandated end date of 2017.
After five or six years of being "grossly underfunded" during the Bush administration "to the real credit of the Obama administration, they came in for the FY 10 defense request and agreed to plus up the [ACWA] construction moneys by a couple hundred million dollars," said Paul Walker, director of the Security and Sustainability program at the environmental organization Global Green USA (see GSN, April 29, 2009).
It remains to be seen whether the higher funding level will be maintained. ACWA officials said it would not be appropriate to disclose the fiscal 2011 budget request until it is advertised in President Barack Obama's spending proposal to Congress at the beginning of February.
"We're guardedly optimistic but certainly pleased with finally realizing full funding of the ACWA project at least in fiscal 2010," said Craig Williams, co-chairman of the Kentucky Chemical Demilitarization Citizens' Advisory Commission.
Lawmakers in Colorado and Kentucky have pressed for more money for chemical agent neutralization sites, and Defense Secretary Robert Gates requested $545 million to cover construction, administrative and research and development costs, officials and observers said. Congress added another $5 million.
No amount of funding is expected to allow disposal work to accelerate to the point of meeting the Chemical Weapons Convention schedule or even Congress' 2017 mandate.
"We clearly cannot make 2012," said ACWA Program Manager Kevin Flamm. "As much as we would love to be in that situation, that just is not in the realm of possibility."
The program has been constrained by funding levels and setbacks in development of the disposal facilities, along with legal restrictions that would make it impossible to transfer the Colorado and Kentucky stockpiles to states with operating disarmament facilities.
The latest funding does, though, allow the Pentagon to push ahead with awarding some major construction contracts. That will support its aim to finish work at Pueblo in 2017 rather than the earlier anticipated date of 2020 and at Blue Grass in 2021 rather than 2023.
"It'll be very important for the Obama administration to continue this [ACWA] funding so that the construction does get done in a timely way and the facilities get fully systematized," Walker said. "Hopefully in less than a decade from now we can declare the whole U.S chemical weapons stockpile completely gone."
Deadline Issues
The United States joined the Chemical Weapons Convention in 1997, the year the pact entered into force. Like the 187 other member nations, it has pledged not to develop, produce, stockpile or use banned materials such as mustard blister agent or sarin nerve agent.
All parties to the convention were supposed to have destroyed any chemical stockpiles by April 2007. Several received schedule extensions, with the United States successfully requesting the maximum five-year allowance.
Congress entered the fray three years ago with its own demand as it became increasingly apparent that the country would not be able to make the deadline.
In its efforts to catch up to lawmakers' demand for full chemical disarmament by 2017, the ACWA program is considering new options to speed weapons disposal schedules. Washington is also working to demonstrate to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, the monitoring agency for the convention, that it is sincerely striving to destroy its chemical agents as quickly as possible.
Defense officials are searching for technological ways to bridge an anticipated gap in disposal work so that operations can proceed continuously. In December, ACWA representatives briefed residents near Pueblo and Blue Grass on their proposal to use a method called Explosive Destruction Technology to eliminate some munitions at both installations (see GSN, Dec. 9, 2009).
"We're looking at how we can augment the facilities to provide additional destruction capability at both sites," Flamm told Global Security Newswire.
Under the current schedule, there are two projected periods when no disposal work would be going on in the country. The first gap is projected to begin in January 2012 when the U.S. Army Chemical Materials Agency finishes operations and end in January 2015 when the chemical neutralization facility at Pueblo comes online. The second break is projected to last from December 2017 to October 2018 -- the time between the point at which the Pueblo site finishes work and the Blue Grass facility comes online.
Assembled Chemical Weapons Alternatives officials are proposing to use mobile Explosive Destruction Technology systems that would allow disposal operations to begin at Pueblo in 2012 while the full Chemical Agent-Destruction Pilot Plant there is still under construction.
Flamm said officials are considering several EDT options that include a trailer-mounted mobile system used by the U.S. Army for years to destroy recovered chemical munitions and the commercial DAVINCH system that has been employed in Japan and Belgium.
"We're looking at using one or a combination of these systems at Pueblo and Blue Grass to allow us to begin destruction operations prior to the main facilities going operational," Flamm said. "This does several things: it allows for continuity in destruction operations with respect to the national programs. Secondly, it allows us to potentially complete destruction operations earlier."
Using explosive technologies would be expected to shorten disposal work by months, not years, Flamm said.
The technology might be applied to 15 percent of the chemical weapons stockpiles at each site, according to Flamm. Explosive technology is being considered for 125,000 mustard agent-filled munitions in Colorado and 15,000 mustard- and nerve-agent filled projectiles in Kentucky.
Congressionally mandated citizens' advisory commissions in both states have opposed the use of the technology beyond the small amount of munitions deemed too dangerous to send through the agent neutralization process.
"As far as we're concerned six months is nothing," Colorado Chemical Demilitarization Citizens' Advisory Commission Chairwoman Irene Kornelly said of the anticipated time savings. "Not when you've been waiting since 1994 to get this process done. Six months is a joke. Six months is nothing in this process."
In a letter, to ACWA officials, the Colorado panel said it could not "endorse any specific EDT system for use at [Pueblo] at this time due to a lack of information about the technical capabilities of the systems, reliability and maintenance concerns and the environmental impacts and compliance of any such system within the U.S."
Williams said the Kentucky advisory commission was presently opposed to the proposal but would wait and see if and how it was applied in Colorado before objecting further.
"As far as the acceptability of an explosive detonation technology, we remain unconvinced that it will meet the [environmental and health] criteria required but the jury's still out on that," said Williams, who also heads the Kentucky-based watchdog Chemical Weapons Working Group.
An ACWA assessment on the feasibility of using Explosive Destruction Technology has been sent to the Defense Department for review.
Army Disposal Work Continues
Progress on destroying the other 90 percent of the United States chemical weapons stockpile continues relatively unabated. As of Jan. 20, the Army had eliminated 22,263 tons of chemical agent -- 70.7 percent of the United State’s original declared tonnage, according to Chemical Materials Agency spokesman Greg Mahall.
The agency's fiscal 2010 budget is $1.56 billion. That is down slightly from the agency’s fiscal 2009 budget of $1.6 billion (see GSN, Nov. 6, 2008). Approximately $1.15 billion of this year’s funding is set to go to operations and maintenance, Mahall said.
Three of the agency’s seven sites have completed their work. Weapons disposal operations continue at the Anniston Army Depot in Alabama, the Pine Bluff Arsenal in Arkansas, the Umatilla Chemical Depot in Oregon and the Deseret Chemical Depot in Utah.
The Army’s working estimates for disposal work to be finished is: June 2013 for Utah; January 2013 for Umatilla; December 2012 for Anniston; and May 2011 for Pine Bluff, according to Mahall.
"Caveat all of those dates," Mahall said, adding that the Army was working on moving them all forward. "Right now, our prognosis seems to indicate that we feel very confident that we'll meet the 2012 deadline at those four sites."