Depot gets failing grade in Bush budget plan

This story was published Fri, Feb 8, 2002

By Mary Hopkin
Herald Valley bureau

UMATILLA -- The Department of Defense gave the Army's chemical weapons disposal program a failing grade in President Bush's budget plan released this week.

The 2003 budget, which includes short evaluations of select programs with the spending proposals, called the chemical demilitarization program ineffective because of schedule delays and cost overruns.

"These delays are the result of various difficulties, including unrealistic schedules, site safety and environmental concerns and poor planning," the report said.

In addition, the program has seen a 60 percent cost increase, from $15 to $24 million.

The Army's chemical demilitarization program is in charge of destroying chemical munition stockpiles at nine sites in the United States, including the Umatilla Chemical Depot.

The depot stores 220,604 munitions and containers filled with 7.4 million pounds of deadly nerve and mustard agents.

The budget footnote came as no surprise to Karyn Jones of the Chemical Weapons Working Group, which opposes incineration. "This is not news, although it's nice the federal government is acknowledging the problems," Jones said.

The Army has stockpiled nearly 30,000 tons of the deadly chemicals, which had been scheduled to be destroyed by 2007 as part of an international chemical weapons treaty.

Last spring, an internal Army memo revealed doubts on whether the deadline could be met and concluded that it could require up to 11 extra years to destroy all the weapons.

Incineration of the weapons at the Umatilla Chemical Depot was originally scheduled to be completed in mid-2005. Now it's expected to start in February 2003 and continue until at least December 2008 in a best case scenario. Any delays could push that timeline to mid-2013.

Sue Oliver, spokeswoman for the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality, said she hopes the Department of Defense takes the budget message seriously.

Umatilla County Commissioner Dennis Doherty said having the Department of Defense review the program is not the answer.

 

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