Keeping depot might boost jobs

Environmentalists are outraged that the Base Realignment and Closure Commission has voted to extend the life of Deseret Chemical Depot, but Tooele County officials say such a move could mean more jobs in the area and may be a safer way to destroy conventional weapons.

By keeping the Army's $1 billion incinerator in business beyond the time when it has destroyed all of the chemical arms stored in the Tooele County stockpile, opponents to the facility say it opens the door for the military to ship dangerous material to the state for destruction.

Early this year, the Army seemed to be backing away from the legislative mandate that all eight chemical weapon stockpiles were to be destroyed where they were. The Pentagon began looking into shipping chemical arms from Pueblo (Colo.) Chemical Depot to Utah, but the outcry was so great that it backed off.

With the extension of the Utah incinerator's life, pressure could build to ship in chemical weapons from around the country from stockpiles where destruction plants have not yet been built, environmentalists fear.

The commission's decision "leaves the door open for changing yet another law, the law being that we won't transport the remaining chemical weapons" to another state for incineration, said Steve Erickson, director of the military watchdog group Citizens Education Project.

"The current law is that they have to tear that plant (the Utah incinerator) down when its mission is completed," he added. "How many more times are the feds going to renege on their promises to the people of the state of Utah?"

The country's chemical arms are stored at stockpiles in Utah, Colorado, Oregon, Arkansas, Alabama, Indiana, Kentucky and Maryland. They are supposed to be destroyed by 2012 in each of the locations.

But the program is "behind by years and years" with cost overruns going into the billions of dollars, Erickson said. Some plants have not been built yet.

"The reality is anything could happen with that facility as long as it's left open," said Jason Groenewold, director of the Healthy Environment Alliance of Utah.

That does not necessarily mean it will accept for destruction more chemical weapons, which are now banned by federal law from crossing state lines. Groenewold thinks other dangerous material besides nerve and blister agent might be more likely to come into Utah.

"The military has a lot of hazardous waste and other dangerous materials across the country that they'd love to dump here," he said.

Also, if the base remains open, he wondered, does that lift the Army's obligation to clean it up once it closes? "There is quite a bit of contamination that exists out there," he said.