30,000 Tons Would Be Burned at Sites in 8 States : U.S. Poison Gas Stockpiled Around Country

At least 30,000 tons of lethal nerve gases and mustard gas that would be destroyed under the terms of a proposed agreement with the Soviet Union are stockpiled at eight sites across the country and one in the Pacific.

After an extensive study last year, a panel convened by the National Academy of Sciences concluded that the best disposal option is to build an incinerator at each of the eight sites to burn the chemicals, at a cost that the U.S. Army says could exceed $3.5 billion. The only alternative seriously considered was transportation of the lethal agents to one or two central sites for burning--an option that was dismissed because of the unacceptably high risks of moving the materials around.

Realistically, said chemical warfare expert Matthew Meselson of Harvard University, incineration is the “only option” for disposing of the obsolete chemical weapons that would be covered under the agreement. “We’ve been working toward this for 15 years,” he said.

Meselson and other researchers acknowledge that risks are involved in burning the agents if it is not done carefully. Even the Army concedes the risks.

“We don’t have any risk-free options,” conceded Charles Baronian, technical director of the Army’s chemical demilitarization program. “All options have fairly significant risk associated with them.”

But the risks of not burning the agents might be even greater. Already, according to Will Collette, national organizing director for the Citizens Clearinghouse for Hazardous Wastes in Arlington, Va., 2% to 5% of the containers in which the agents are now stored are leaking.

“Everybody involved recognizes that the Army is in a real bind,” Collette said. “It’s too dangerous to leave them sitting there. It’s too dangerous to move them. The Army simply may not have any choice but to burn them.”

Opposition to the Army’s incineration plan has been arising in the communities surrounding the storage depots, but even those groups are not opposed to the idea of burning the chemical warfare agents--only to the thought of burning them in their own backyards. Most of the thrust of such groups now, Collette said, is to ensure that the Army takes adequate safeguards in burning the agents and that health and property rights are protected.

None of the storage sites are in California. The eight storage depots in the United States are: Tooele, near Salt Lake City, Utah, 42% of the total; Umatilla, near Pendleton, Ore., 12%; Pueblo, Colo., 10%; Pine Bluff, near Little Rock, Ark., 12%; Newport, near Terre Haute, Ind., 4%; Aberdeen, Md., 5%; Lexington-Bluegrass, near Richmond, Ky., 2%, and Anniston, near Huntsville, Ala., 7%. An additional 6.6% is also stored outside the continental United States, primarily at Johnston Island in the Pacific.

The incinerator at Tooele has been completed, and about 6.2 million pounds of chemical warfare agents have been destroyed there in the past two years, according to Army Maj. Joel Padilla. Tests of the new incinerator are scheduled to begin at Johnston Island within two months, and incinerators are under construction at other sites.