United States:  Chemical Disposal Plant Does Not Affect Neighbors

The U.S. Health and Human Services Department has said that chemical weapons destruction at Utah’s Tooele Army Depot is not a public health risk to civilian residents nearby, the Tooele Transcript Bulletin reported Thursday (see GSN, April 29).

“I think the Army is doing a good job of mitigating environmental contaminants so as to limit their transport off-site to the surrounding community,” said Sue Neurath, an environmental health scientist with the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, part of Health and Human Services.

The agency recently completed a public health assessment.  In its report, the agency said that plumes of smoke from the chemical weapons disposal would not have any effect on drinking water or air quality.

“Like most plumes, as it continues moving, the concentration drops dramatically as it moves away from the source,” she said. “Only a very small concentration is leaving the base,” the report says (Michael Rigert, Tooele Transcript Bulletin, June 26).

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Russia:  European Union to Provide CW Disposal Equipment Next Year

European Union members are expected to provide Russia with more than $4.5 million worth of engineering and technical equipment next year for Russian chemical weapons storage and disposal facilities, ITAR-Tass reported Wednesday (see GSN, June 10). 

Some of the equipment will be sent to the Gorny chemical weapons disposal plant, said Alexander Kharichev, adviser to the chairman of the Russian State Commission for Chemical Disarmament (ITAR-Tass, JUNE 25 in FBIS-SOV, June 25).

The European Union is currently implementing several programs to aid Russia in disposing of its chemical weapons stockpiles, the Russian Ammunition Agency said Wednesday.

“Russia’s cooperation with the EU in chemical disarmament has been ongoing since 1999 under two programs — Tacis and a joint-action program,” an agency spokesman said.  “A number of projects totaling several million euros are currently being implemented,” the spokesman added.

The Tacis program was responsible for the establishment of an environmental monitoring system in the Saratov region, where the Gorny disposal plant is located, according to Interfax.  In addition, a project in the city of Dzerzhinsk to develop building decontamination technologies and a project in the city of Cheboksary to develop medical and environmental monitoring systems are being implemented through the Tacis program (Interfax, June 25 in FBIS-SOV, June 25).

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United States:  Contract Awarded for Pine Bluff Disposal Facility

The U.S. Army has awarded a U.S. company a $20.4 million contract to build a facility at the Pine Bluff Arsenal in Arkansas to dispose of binary precursor chemicals used in the production of chemical weapons, the Pine Bluff Commercial reported today (see GSN, May 21).

Teledyne Brown Engineering will convert a building at the arsenal to dispose of stockpiles of methylphosphonic difluoride (DF) and o-ethyl-o-2-diisopropylaminoethyl methylphosphonite (QL), which were designed to combine with other chemicals in a chemical weapon to produce sarin and VX.

The Pine Bluff Binary Destruction Facility will be housed in a building originally designed for DF production and will use some of the same equipment used to produce the chemical agent, according to the Commercial.  Construction of the facility is set to begin in June 2004 and is scheduled to be completed in January 2005 (Pine Bluff Commercial, June 24).

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CWC:  OPCW Executive Council Set to Begin Three-Day Session Today

The Executive Council of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, which oversees the Chemical Weapons Convention, is set to begin a three-day meeting today in The Hague (see GSN, June 3).

The meeting’s agenda includes discussion on Russia’s efforts to dispose of its chemical weapons stockpile, with a report on the operation of the Gorny chemical weapons disposal plant to be made public (see GSN, June 4).

Other items on the agenda include the conversion of former chemical weapons disposal facilities to civilian use, verification plans and various budgetary matters, according to Russian OPCW representative Gennady Lutai (Nikolai Teterin, ITAR-Tass, June 24).

For further information, see:

CWC Text

OPCW Main Page

CWC States Parties

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