Army again considers transporting chemical weapons; proposal would include shipping arms from Kentucky to Anniston

Thursday, July 03, 2008
KATHERINE BOUMA
News staff writer

The Pentagon is considering a plan to move chemical weapons from Kentucky to Alabama for destruction at an incinerator in Anniston, according to a report the Department of Defense submitted to Congress this week.

According to the memo, "preliminary findings" showed that the Army could meet a 2017 deadline if it were allowed to cancel construction projects in Kentucky and Colorado, where weapons-destruction facilities have not been built. Instead, weapons from those states would be destroyed at existing incinerators, including at the Anniston Army Depot.

The Army is not advocating to move weapons, said Karen Drewen, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Army Chemical Materials Agency.

"That's only an option," she said. "There was no preference made for that. There was no recommendation made for that."

The memo also listed the option of providing incentives for meeting deadlines to operators of existing incinerators. However, the Army wrote, that would not help destroy the weapons in Kentucky and Colorado on time. The third option in the report was listed as hurrying construction at Kentucky and Colorado, "to get as close to 2017 as practicable."

The United States has signed an international treaty to destroy all Cold War-era chemical weapons by 2012. It has been clear for many years that the Army could not meet that deadline, but Congress passed a law requiring the work to be done by 2017.

The Kentucky stockpile could be sent to incinerators under operation in Arkansas and Alabama, according to the six-page report, which the Department of Defense released Wednesday. Anniston has the nearest chemical weapons incinerator to the 101,764 weapons in the Kentucky stockpile, which is at the Blue Grass Army Depot about 400 miles from Anniston.

The paper did not explain how it had reached its conclusions, and Drewen said she did not have documentation of the Army's work in preparing the memo.

The Army has been operating a chemical-weapons incinerator in Anniston for five years and has destroyed 48 percent of the stockpile there. The Army estimates it will finish its work there in 2013.

The equipment is shut down and retooled after each type of weapon is destroyed, so a detailed schedule would be required to show how the Army would destroy Kentucky weapons at Anniston, said Craig Williams, executive director of the watchdog Chemical Weapons Working Group in Kentucky.

He said he could not understand why the Department of Defense would suggest moving the weapons. As the memo authors immediately noted, federal law prohibits moving stockpile weapons across state lines.

"It's illegal - it shouldn't even be under review," Williams said. "Secondly, it puts millions of Americans at risk along these transportation sites."

The report did not address whether the weapons could be moved safely.

Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., released a statement saying he will continue to oppose changing the law to allow weapons transportation.

"While chemical demilitarization in Anniston, Alabama, has been extremely successful, I believe the transportation risks of moving these weapons across state lines outweigh the benefits," he said. "We cannot sacrifice safety and security for expediency."

Most of the weapons are 50 years old or more, according to Army officials. Some of them were corroded and leaking small amounts of nerve agent and would have been unsafe to transport or use in combat.

In the past, the Army has said that, for safety reasons, weapons from each of the nation's eight chemical-weapons stockpiles must be destroyed on-site. Utah and Maryland stockpiles are already gone and the work there finished.

E-mail: kbouma@bhamnews.com