Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, has added his voice to the chorus of officials insisting the federal government must not transport chemical weapons across state lines.

Pressed by a deadline in the Chemical Weapons Convention, the Defense Department is considering moving chemical weapons from sites where no destruction facilities have been built to places where they are operating — such as the incinerator at Deseret Chemical Depot near Stockton, Tooele County.

The department recently directed the Army and the Assembled Chemical Weapons Alternatives group to develop alternatives to achieve the deadline spelled out in the treaty, which requires full destruction of chemical arms by April 2012.

"Also, the Army is to address safeguarding the chemical weapons stockpile when relocation among sites is considered as one of these alternatives," wrote Patrick J. Wakefield, deputy assistant secretary of the Defense Department.

"Transporting these weapons across state lines is illegal, and rightly so," Hatch said in a news release. "These are volatile, deadly chemicals that would pass right through highly populated areas in Utah, and there's no way we could guarantee their safety."

He said the weapons are safely contained where they are now, in eight separate stockpiles across the United States.

"We are on target to eliminate them completely without placing our communities at risk," Hatch added.

Earlier, Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. declared his "strong opposition" to moving aging mustard agent from Pueblo, Colo., to Utah.

In Congress, Colorado's two senators moved to halt the study. Wayne Allard, Republican, and Ken Salazar, Democrat, co-sponsored the legislation.

According to Allard's office, contacted Thursday, others signing onto the bill so far include Sens. Richard Shelby, R-Ala.; Mitch McConnell, R-KY; Jim Bunning, R-KY; Paul Sarbanes, D-MD; Barbara Mikulski, D-MD; Ron Wyden, D-OR; Bob Bennett, R-Utah; Evan Bayh, D-Ind.; and Hatch. Bennett earlier articulated reasons for his opposition.

According to Jeffrey Lindblad, spokesman for the Army Chemical Materials Agency at Aberdeen Proving Ground, Md., the agency assigned Kevin P. Duvall to lead a technical assessment on the project. Duvall is acting director of the CMA's Threat Reduction Support Directorate.

The team has an interim deadline of Feb. 18. March 21 is the final deadline to report to Michael W. Wynne, acting undersecretary of the Defense Department.

The CMA release notes that as of Jan. 26, disposal operations at the Stockton plant, and in Maryland, Alabama, Oregon and on Johnston Island in the Pacific have resulted "in the safe destruction of almost 35 percent of the nation's declared chemical weapons stockpile." That amounts to 42 percent of the "originally declared munitions."

Disposal operations are to begin in coming months in Arkansas and Indiana, adds the statement.

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