While most states are eager to see hazardous
materials head for the nearest border, Colorado has decided to
cling to the aging chemical weapons stored at the Army’s
Pueblo Chemical Depot.
Federal legislation passed May 12
will keep Pueblo’s 780,000 Cold War-era mustard gas shells on
site for destruction, after a tense period when the fate of the
weapons seemed unsure.
In 2002, the U.S. Department of
Defense announced plans to destroy the shells on-site to meet a
2012 deadline imposed by an international chemical weapons treaty.
The Army planned to use an innovative water neutralization process
instead of traditional incineration methods. But early this year,
after projected construction and processing costs had ballooned
from $1.5 billion to $2.6 billion, the Defense Department began
studying cheaper disposal methods, including a controversial
proposal to ship the gas shells to an out-of-state depot for
incineration.
“People went ballistic,” says Ross Vincent,
former head of Better Pueblo, a local environmental and labor
coalition that had lobbied for on-site water neutralization. Area
residents were outraged over the possibility of lost local jobs,
while people across the region, worried about the health,
environmental and terrorism risks associated with transporting and
incinerating the weapons.
Responding to the outcry, Sens.
Wayne Allard, R-Colo., and Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., sponsored
legislation that halts all further study of moving the weapons and
earmarks $372 million to redesign the plans for their on-site
destruction.
Vincent says the bill, which virtually
guarantees 1,000 short-term construction jobs and 200 to 300
operation jobs over the next decade, brought a “huge sigh of relief
in the community.” But he says the Pentagon’s delay may still
cause problems, making it “difficult, if not impossible to meet
treaty deadlines.”
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Pueblo happily hangs on to mustard gas.
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