The Bush administration’s fiscal 2003 budget proposal increases funding for the disposal of chemical weapons by $393 million, according to budget documents released yesterday.

The proposed chemical weapons destruction budget would allocate $974 million for research, $213 million for operations and management and $302 million for procurement, such as constructing new chemical weapons disposal facilities (U.S. Defense Department release, Feb. 4).

Construction began yesterday on a chemical weapons disposal facility at Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland, in an accelerated plan to destroy more than 1,600 tons of mustard gas stored there (see GSN, Jan. 10).

Two weeks later than expected, U.S. Defense Department officials last week approved construction of a facility that will be smaller than originally planned, according to the Baltimore Sun.  Even with the delay, officials said they could still finish destroying the gas by the end of the year, three years sooner than originally planned.

“I’m confident we’ll be able [to] finish in December,” said Kevin Flamm, project manager for alternative technologies and approaches at Aberdeen’s Office of the Project Manager for Chemical Demilitarization (Lane Harvey Brown, Baltimore Sun, Feb. 4).

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