Colorado Issues Unilateral Order to Military Imposing 2017
Deadline for Destruction of Chemical Weapons at Pueblo
Chemical Depot
June 18, 2008 - DENVER - The Colorado Department
of Public Health and Environment today issued a compliance
order to the U.S. Department of Defense, its Assembled
Chemical Weapons Assessment Program and the Department of
the Army requiring treatment and destruction of chemical
weapons stored at the Pueblo Chemical Depot by Dec. 31,
2017. The date is six years earlier than the Department of
Defense’s current schedule to destroy the chemical weapons
by Dec. 31, 2023.
Gary Baughman, director of the Hazardous Materials and
Waste Management Division at the Colorado Department of
Public Health and Environment, said, “Our compliance order
requires the military to file a chemical waste treatment
plan within 60 days of the effective date of this order.
This plan will describe the methods to be used to treat and
destroy all hazardous waste weapons and other agent wastes
at the Pueblo Chemical Depot.”
The state’s order requires the Pueblo Chemical Depot’s
chemical weapons stockpile, including secondary waste
currently stored under a separate permit, be treated and
destroyed by Dec. 31, 2017. The chemical weapons contain
mustard agent, an acutely toxic hazardous waste known to
cause cancer and birth defects.
Storage of hazardous waste is prohibited under state
hazardous waste regulations, except when additional
quantities of the waste need to be accumulated to facilitate
its proper treatment or when an alternate schedule is in
place under a compliance order. And, according to the
compliance order, the mustard agent-filled weapons are not
being stored for purpose of accumulating adequate quantities
for treatment. No further accumulation is needed, as the
Pueblo Chemical Depot currently stores hundreds of thousands
of waste chemical weapons at the site.
The chemical waste treatment plan also will provide a
complete project schedule depicting the tasks required for
the destruction of the wastes by Dec. 31, 2017. Some of
these tasks then could be designated by the Colorado
Department of Public Health and Environment as enforceable
milestones in the waste treatment plan.
In 2002, the Department of Defense decided to destroy
weapons at the Pueblo Depot by chemically neutralizing the
mustard agent and then biologically treating it. A
construction contractor was then selected, and the first
phase of Pueblo Chemical Agent-Destruction Pilot Plant
permitting was completed. However, in 2004 the Department of
Defense decreased the funding required to destroy the
weapons by an earlier completion date of April 29, 2012.
Recent Department of Defense-generated treatment schedules
for destruction of the mustard weapons at the Pueblo
Chemical Depot extend out as far as 2023.
State health department representatives have been working
with the Army and Defense Department to bring storage of the
chemical weapons in the stockpile into compliance with the
regulations. The parties also have been working with the
Assembled Chemical Weapons Alternatives Program to design,
construct and permit the Pueblo Chemical Agent-Destruction
Pilot Plant, where the chemical weapons will be treated. For
more information about the Pueblo Chemical Depot chemical
weapons destruction, please see the website at
http://www.cdphe.state.co.us/hm/pcd/index.htm .
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