EDITORIAL
Sunday, May 17, 2009
Refusal to burn weapons looking smarter all the time
Ky. can't stand any more toxins in the air
Consider where chemical weapons are being burned, then where they have been or will be neutralized through a more environmentally benign process.
The incinerators are in places that are home to large poor and minority populations, are isolated or both: Pine Bluff, Ark.; Anniston, Ala.; Umitalla, Ore.; Tooele, Utah.
The military bowed to local insistence on neutralization in places, including Kentucky's Madison County, where residents are better educated, more likely to be white and able to flex more political muscle.
It's not fair or right, but it's a pattern repeated time and again in the siting of industries that send large amounts of toxic chemicals into the air.
The demographics of toxic air are detailed in a study released last week of newly available data from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
Researchers at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst and the University of Southern California produced "Justice in the Air" (www.peri.umass.edu/justice), documenting the disparity in toxic exposure between the poor and people of color, and the rest of the population.
The study also includes a broad overall measure. And guess what: Kentucky is one of five states where residents are most likely to be breathing air contaminated by a long list of substances that make up the EPA's Toxic Release Inventory. The others are Tennessee, Ohio, Indiana and Louisiana.
The data are from 2005, before DuPont closed its plant in Louisville's Rubbertown, once a notorious source of chloroprene, a suspected carcinogen that damages eyes, skin, respiratory and reproductive systems.
Kentucky still has other high-polluting industries, though, including coal-fired power plants, which may help explain why Kentuckians suffer high rates of respiratory disease and cancer.
This backdrop of poisonous air reenforces the wisdom of refusing the chemical-weapons incinerator that the Army tried for years to force on Kentucky.
Last week brought good news about the prospects for safely eliminating the Cold War-era poison gas and rockets. No longer, it appears, will the military try to undermine neutralization plans at Blue Grass Army Depot and Peublo, Colo.
Spurred by Sen. Mitch McConnell and Rep. Ben Chandler, the highest levels of the Pentagon finally have committed to long-term funding, meaning contractor Bechtel finally can plan beyond the next fiscal year and aggressively move Blue Grass toward start-up.
USA Today reports the Pentagon plans to speed weapons destruction at Blue Grass and Pueblo by more than three years with a $1.2 billion acceleration of construction. The 2010 defense budget requests $550.4 million for chemical weapons neutralization, a hefty increase from the earlier projection of $300.4 million.
In more good news, the military also ended talk of transporting the by-product of weapons neutralization, a chemical agent called hydrolysate, to other sites for disposal. Moving the waste would pose a greater risk to the public than getting rid of it at Blue Grass.
Some may wonder if Kentucky should have gone along with incineration to more quickly eliminate the risks from deteriorating weapons. But Blue Grass has always been last on the Pentagon's weapons disposal list.
Though the U.S. will miss a treaty deadline for destroying chemical weapons, holding out for a safer alternative will probably end up adding not a single year to the lifespan of Kentucky's unwanted arsenal, while perhaps adding to the lifespan of some Kentuckians.