WASHINGTON — The U.S. Defense Department has received its highest-ever budget for preparing two chemical weapons disposal sites that hold the key to meeting the congressional demand to eliminate the entire U.S. stockpile by 2017 (see GSN, July 8).
(Nov. 6) -
A crane moves a tank of chemical-weapon disposal waste at the Pueblo Chemical Depot in Colorado (U.S. Army photo).
The $427.5 million provided to the Assembled Chemical Weapons Alternatives program for fiscal 2009 is a step in the right direction toward providing the money that will be needed to meet the deadline, one longtime observer said.
“We see the … budget request as a positive indication [against] the potential to shy away from what would be necessary to meet the shortened schedule; the heartburn that they would suffer would not be as great,” said Craig Williams, head of the Kentucky-based Chemical Weapons Working Group.
Funding for the agency this year is up from $407.1 million in fiscal 2008 and $349.2 million in fiscal 2007.
To meet the mandate set last year on Capitol Hill, the Pentagon is going to need to direct $450 million to $500 million annually in combined funding over the next nine years to the Blue Grass Army Depot in Kentucky and the Pueblo Chemical Depot in Colorado, Williams told Global Security Newswire. The figures are based on discussions with informed sources, he said.
A Pentagon spokesman said the necessary funding levels are still being assessed. The existing schedule has disposal operations finishing in 2020 at Pueblo and three years later at Blue Grass.
“While the DOD continues working to minimize the time to complete destruction of the remaining chemical weapons stockpile without sacrificing safety and security, the current approved [chemical demilitarization program] cost and schedule estimates are based on actual experiences, lessons learned, and adjustments associated with implementation of this most challenging program,” the Pentagon said in a June report to Congress.
Current Operations
The United States as of Wednesday had destroyed 57.5 percent of its total original stockpile of 31,500 tons of mustard blister agent and VX and sarin nerve agents. Most of the weapons were produced in the World War II-era or later.
The disposal program, when first envisioned in 1985, was expected to be finished within a decade and cost roughly $1.8 billion. Instead, it remains a going concern that is set to require roughly $36 billion.
As long as the lethal materials remain in existence, they present a potential danger to nearby communities and an attractive target for terrorists looking for a shortcut to a new capability. Any stockpiles left after April 2012 would also violate the deadline set by the Chemical Weapons Convention, which requires full destruction of the U.S. chemical arsenal.
All operations to date have been handled at seven sites by the Army Chemical Materials Agency. It received the bulk of the more than $1.6 billion appropriated for weapons destruction operations in the budget year that began Oct. 1.
The Army is not focused on meeting the congressional directive, but rather the deadline set by the international treaty.
Three storage depots have already finished off their stockpiles. The latest disposal schedule, dating from April 2006, has the Army completing operations between 2015 and 2017 at incinerators in Alabama, Arkansas, Oregon and Utah. “We’re moving these schedules to the left,” with the goal being 2012, said CMA spokesman Greg Mahall.
Paul Walker, security and sustainability program head for Global Green USA, estimated that the Army’s side of chemical weapons elimination is more likely to be finished in 2013 to 2014.
Mahall acknowledged the potential for unforeseen delays caused by technical breakdowns or operational errors. A May 2000 incident involving the release of a minute amount of sarin from the Tooele Chemical Agent Disposal Facility in Utah led to a nine-month shutdown, he noted.
“Safety is our top priority. We’re going to work that to the best of our ability. And we get done when we get done,” Mahall said.
Future Work
More than 520 tons of mustard, VX and sarin agents contained in several types of munitions are stored at Blue Grass, while Pueblo holds 2,600 tons of mustard agent. The ACWA weapons processing sites, operated separately from the Army disposal operation, are to use chemical neutralization technology to eliminate the weapons material.
Plans for the actual work have been subject to major reversals of fortune in recent years. While the Bush administration ordered preparation of the disposal plants to be accelerated following the Sept. 11 attacks, that mandate proved temporary in the face of expensive wars in two nations, cost overruns at operational chemical weapons incineration plants and orders for redesigns for the Colorado and Kentucky facilities.
The Pentagon placed both sites on “caretaker status” for the 2004-2005 budget year, leaving just enough money to sustain operations at ACWA headquarters at the Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland, Williams said: “No money for design or construction, nothing that would move us forward toward the objective, which is to get rid of this material. An ACWA spokeswoman said the agency received “limited” redesign funds that year and $70 million for “neutral site improvements” at Blue Grass and Pueblo.
Community and political pressure led the Pentagon to increase ACWA funding to roughly $150 million in the following fiscal year, and appropriations have continued to rise in subsequent budgets, Williams said. This year, the agency received $144.3 million for construction at the two plants, and $288.2 million for research and development, which encompasses design, management, testing and other costs.
Design work on the Blue Grass Chemical Agent Destruction Pilot Plant was 83 percent complete as of September, concrete was being poured for the main chemical neutralization plant and installation of equipment was under way.
The Pueblo Chemical Agent Destruction Pilot Plant is fully designed and construction continued on the two primary facilities needed for weapons disposal (see GSN, Oct. 30).
The agency in June submitted three options for addressing the 2017 deadline. The first would simply maintain the existing schedule, while the second would involve moving the weapons from Colorado and Kentucky to states that have operating disposal facilities. That plan would require changes to state and federal laws banning such shipments and has already proven extremely unpopular.
The third option calls for boosting personnel to enable more rapid completion of construction, testing the operational capability of equipment earlier than planned and conducting disposal operations 24 hours a day, seven days a week. All mustard-agent munitions at Blue Grass would be destroyed using an explosive detonation chamber, allowing that disposal project to be operated simultaneously with destruction of nerve agent weapons.
“If implemented, destruction of the Colorado stockpile by December 2017 does appear possible; however, destruction of the Kentucky stockpile would require some additional time,” according to an ACWA document. Work at Blue Grass is likely to continue into 2019, the agency told GSN.
The Pentagon is preparing a schedule assessment for the third option, which is to be included in the presidential fiscal 2010 budget request, due to be submitted early next year.
Assembled Chemical Weapons Alternatives has already sent a draft funding plan for that option to the Defense Department, Williams said. “It is just a draft and I’ve been hearing some ugly rumors about how it’s being received over at the Pentagon,” he said.
“The Pentagon probably will only agree to that if we see the war costs wind down, and Congress makes some tough choices between other [defense] priorities,” Walker said.
The Pentagon stands to shave roughly $2.4 billion off the total cost for operations at Blue Grass and Pueblo if it can finish work by April 2017, Williams said. The current cost estimate for the entire ACWA program, including construction, weapons elimination and plant closures, is roughly $8 billion. A revised estimate is being prepared, according to the agency.
“If we can start operations at this [Kentucky] plant in 2016 or even 17 rather than 2021, that’s a significant reduction in risk to this community. Because it’s that number of years less that we’re sitting on this stuff,” Williams said. “Any way you slice and dice this thing … it’s much more reasonable to accelerate this project, and that’s what we’re pushing for.”