PUEBLO, Colo. — Workers have begun destroying a massive stockpile of American chemical weapons stored at a former Army munitions depot near Colorado’s ninth-largest city, blasting the artillery rounds open with explosives and neutralizing them with solvents.
Workers perform their slow, painstaking task under heavy security and strict safety precautions, which include constant monitoring for leaks, armed guards on random patrols and video monitoring by independent observers. About 780,000 shells and mortar rounds filled with mustard agent are stored at the military-run Pueblo Chemical Depot, and all of them must be destroyed under a 1997 international law.
“You can’t be too safe about what we’re doing here,” said Thomas Schultz, a spokesman for the Pueblo Chemical Agent Destruction Pilot Plant. “As long as things are dull, we’re all happy.”
Chemical weapons were once stored across the USA, including in Oregon and Utah, but the United States has been destroying the stockpile for years. Most were incinerated, but community concerns in Pueblo, about 115 miles south of Denver, and at the Blue Grass Army Depot near Richmond, Ky., delayed destruction until the military could develop new techniques to reduce the risk of mercury contamination from the smoke.
The meticulous disposal process is a stark departure from how the military used to get rid of chemical weapons: either by burying them or dumping them into the ocean.
In 2004 and 2005, some chemical munitions were accidentally dredged up off the New Jersey coast and ended up buried in residential driveways. The Army apparently dumped the munitions in relatively shallow water, said Lenny Siegel, the executive director of the California-based nonprofit Center for Public Environmental Oversight.
“We didn’t have anything better to do with them at the time,” he said.
Siegel, a longtime observer and advocate for communities near chemical weapons and Superfund sites, said the new systems are expensive, slow — and safe.
“It costs more and takes more time, … but safety is given a pre-eminent position,” he said. “It’s no longer out of sight, out of mind, which used to be the approach.”
Mustard agent, which is often referred to as a gas, actually has consistency of molasses. It was made at the Rocky Mountain Arsenal near Denver, loaded into shells, and then shipped to the Pueblo depot for storage starting in the 1950s.
The stockpile must be destroyed on site because federal law prohibits shipping chemical weapons across state lines.
Mustard agent causes severe skin blistering and chemical burns, but those injuries don’t show up immediately. It was designed to cause widespread casualties, forcing armies to stop fighting and remove their wounded to safety for treatment.
About 90% of America’s chemical weapons have been destroyed, and Pueblo Depot holds the bulk of the remainder. Blue Grass, about 40 miles south of Lexington, Ky., has a small amount that includes nerve-agent munitions. Neutralization work in Kentucky isn’t expected to begin for several more years and likely will last until 2023, officials say.
Farmers ranching near the Pueblo depot, about 15 miles east of the city, worried that the Army’s initial plan to burn the chemical munitions could harm their crops — even if that harm came from proximity and not measurable air pollution. The farmers banded with Pueblo residents and ultimately persuaded the government to switch to the on-site destruction and treatment.
“There were all these ‘what ifs?’ ” said Irene Kornelly, the chairwoman of the Colorado Chemical Demilitarization Citizens’ Advisory Commission.
Pueblo-area residents spent 20 years building trust and collaboration with the Army while trying to help get the weapons destroyed, Kornelly said. Citizen interest in the process waned as the two sides reached compromise and the Army moved forward.
“The longer they stay there, the older they get, the more unstable they get, the more potential there is for something to go wrong,” she said. “I’ve always we’ve told people we are one ‘oops’ away from having all those people coming back to the meetings.”
Today, the Pueblo facility can destroy just six shells a day using an explosives chamber, which is loaded by hand.
But contractors are nearing completion of a significantly larger and partially automated $4.5 billion plant that will process up to 60 shells an hour and run continuously. That plant will open early 2016 and then operate until all the weapons are destroyed in 2019.
The automated plant will process the majority of the munitions by unscrewing their ends, removing the explosives inside, and then flushing out and neutralizing the mustard agent. A small number of shells that have leaked, corroded shut or have been previously opened will be destroyed in the explosive chamber.
So far, workers have destroyed about a dozen 105-millimeter artillery shells and 10 test-sample bottles. And to say the eyes of the world are watching is no exaggeration: Independent observers monitor the video-recorded destruction of each munition as workers hold up a clipboard showing its serial number before loading the explosives chamber.
Plant managers recently gave a USA TODAY reporter a tour of the two facilities.
The larger plant will use robots to handle much of the heavy lifting, since some of the largest shells weigh nearly 100 pounds. Human workers who earn about $28 an hour will move munitions from storage bunkers known as igloos into the processing plant.
That plant will be closed to virtually all public access within the next few weeks, and photography is already highly restricted.
Plant operations manager Kim Jackson said her team shares a sense of pride in knowing they’re doing the right thing in ridding the world of the 2,600 tons of explosive-laden chemical weapons stored a few hundred feet away.
“If we don’t do something, they’ll start corroding in their igloos,” she said.
Jackson supervises the largely automated facility, where about 600 people work. Jackson ran a similar destruction facility in Umatilla Chemical Depot, about 175 miles east of Portland, Ore., and is training her staff to begin operations in early 2016. To keep trainees on their toes, she occasionally spills her coffee on the plant floor deliberately, launching a chemical-containment drill.
Today, Jackson’s plant is filled with mock munitions, allowing workers to practice their movements and protocols. Many of the robotic arms and conveyor systems look like they belong in a normal factory although this one has walls 2 feet thick and every molecule of air leaves through five car-sized air filters.
The mustard agent removed from the shells will be treated in corrosion-resistant titanium tanks before being piped into tanks where bacteria help break down any remaining heavy metals. The treated water gets reused, and the remaining salts will be shipped off site for disposal.
The shells that once contained the mustard agent are heated to 1,000 degrees to sterilize them and then can be recycled like any other steel.
“We really are turning swords into plowshares,” said Schultz, the pilot plant spokesman.
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