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Strategies & Market Trends : CXI-Commodore Environmental -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: DLJMT who wrote (1535)	2/22/1999 8:31:00 AM
From: hcm1943	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1755

------------------------------------------------------------------------ Chemical Weapons Working Group PO Box 467 Berea, KY 40403 (606) 986-0868 fax: (606) 986-2695 www.cwwg.org for more information contact: Sheila Witherington: (501) 664-3136 Evelyn Yates: (870) 247-9484 Joe Steward: (870) 247-1975 Jim Stanley: (501) 374-3131 Gregory Ferguson: (501) 374-3535 Mick Harrison: (606) 986-5518 Craig Williams: (606) 986-7565 John Nunn: (410) 778-5968 for immediate release: Tuesday, February 16, 1999 CITIZENS GROUPS FILE APPEAL TO NERVE GAS INCINERATOR; Claim Permit Does Not Adequately Protect Public Health & Environment State and national veterans' organizations joined environmental groups and children's health advocates today in filing an appeal challenging the permit issued to the Army and Raytheon Demilitarization Company to incinerate deadly chemical and blister agents in Pine Bluff. Five Arkansas state and two national groups filed the appeal to the permit issued by the Arkansas Department of Pollution Control and Ecology (ADPC&E). The groups are: Pine Bluff for Safe Disposal; American Legion Post 126; Disabled American Veterans, Pine Bluff Chapter; Woman's Action for New Directions; Vietnam Veterans of America, Arkansas State Council; Chemical Weapons Working Group; and Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation. Among the issues raised in the appeal were that: •1) the permit application to ADPC&E was incomplete; •2) ADPC&E failed to consider the disproportionate pollution on minority and low income populations in Pine Bluff; •3) ADPC&E failed to provide scientific justification for certain permit conditions such as the agent monitoring systems, carbon filters and other major systems included in the permit application; and •4) ADPC&E failed to provide adequate responses to comments submitted by the public on the Draft Permit. In addition, the petitioners stated that, "ADPC&E failed to comply with its federal and state mandate to impose permit conditions that adequately protect public health and the environment." Several boxes of evidence to back up their claims have arrived at the Commission and the groups are prepared to argue their case as soon as the Commission schedules a hearing. "Our objective here is to ensure that Arkansas' chemical weapons are disposed of in a way that protects the public," said Evelyn Yates, President of Pine Bluff for Safe Disposal. "We do not want to stop the overall mission of destroying the munitions." The plan to incinerate chemical weapons has been abandoned at the stockpile sites in Maryland and Indiana. Instead, chemical agents will be destroyed with non-incineration methods, which do not release toxic chemicals into the environment. "In fact," said Craig Williams, Director of the Chemical Weapons Working Group, a national citizen coalition advocating alternative disposal approaches, "it is ironic that the same week we are filing an objection to the Arkansas incinerator permit, Maryland is issuing their final permit for a safer alternative technology." Eighty-three percent of the Pine Bluff chemical weapons stockpile is identical to the stockpile in Maryland. John Nunn, chairman of the Maryland Citizens Advisory Commission said, "Our permit process went very smoothly once everyone agreed on an alternative to incineration. Before the Army switched to the neutralization disposal method there were hundreds of citizens joined in opposition to incineration. I'm sure the permit process would have been much longer and there would have been lawsuits if they would have insisted on burning our stockpile. As it turned out, there was only one comment made to the draft permit here. It was a page and half long." In contrast, the organizations now challenging the Arkansas permit submitted over 130 pages of comments to ADPC&E, raising issues from inadequate identification of toxic emissions to the history of agent leaks at the Army's incineration sites in the Pacific and Utah. Joe Steward, representing the American Legion Post 126 and the Disabled American Veterans of Pine Bluff said, "All we're asking is that veterans in Arkansas be given an equal level of protection as those in other states. We've got Vietnam and Gulf Vets here who have already been exposed to Agent Orange, chemical agents and other toxics. We don't want our fellow veterans, ourselves and our families to be exposed to any more." In their response to citizens comments, the ADPC&E failed to meet their responsibilities to ensure the safest and most protective disposal methods are deployed in Arkansas, according to the groups filing the permit appeal. Thus, the citizen groups feel they had little choice but to file this challenge. Sheila Witherington, President of the Arkansas Chapter of Women's Action for New Directions (WAND) hopes to work with all parties to find a solution. Witherington said, "With citizen awareness and involvement, we are determined to work with the State Legislature, the military and their contractors as well as the Commission in a spirit of cooperation to identify the quickest and safest way to destroy the stockpile. We are most concerned that the most up-to-date resources and technologies are not being used in Arkansas in this effort." In addition to Maryland and Indiana's chemical weapons stockpiles being disposed of through non- incineration methods, Colorado and Kentucky are prohibited from building incinerators while alternatives to incineration are undergoing demonstrations. Currently, three non-incineration technologies are being demonstrated as part of an alternative technologies program called the Assembled Chemical Weapons Assessment (ACWA). The ACWA program was created under a 1996 Congressional directive. Witherington noted that the incineration technology was chosen by the military in 1982 and said, "We don't want to rely on decisions made five, 10, or 17 years ago. In the northeastern and more affluent states, they are quick to recognize a good thing, and they are getting new stuff, while we are stuck with the old stuff here in the South. And that's not fair." WAND requested funding of a study on the impacts of incinerator emissions on children's health from the Army and the State, but were denied. "This is particularly troubling since weapons disposal at Pine Bluff will take place in the closest proximity to children and families of all the nine stockpile sites. We are the most at risk from the incinerator stack emissions," she said. Although the petitioners' comments contained extensive information on alternatives to incineration, ADPC&E deferred to the Army's choice of incineration as outside their authority. They said, "The Air Division did not choose incineration or have the authority to require another technology to treat the material." Witherington's response is, "If 83% of our stockpile is the same as Maryland's, why are we being discriminated against when it comes to technology selection and allocation of resources?" Yates noted, "I'm an Arkansas representative to the Assembled Chemical Weapons Assessment Dialogue and they are demonstrating non-incineration approaches right now for chemical agent munitions disposal. We should not be left behind with an outdated and dangerous approach while others reap the benefits of modern science." -30- A copy of the Appeal filing is available from the CWWG office.