Chemical Weapons Disposal

The Army's plans for destroying nonstockpile chemical warfare materiel are not final and, as a result, its $17.7-billion cost estimate is uncertain and cannot be used for budget purposes. This uncertainty is largely because the amount of materiel to be disposed of has not been fully identified and the disposal methods cannot be selected until the Army is further along in the environmental assessment and permitting process. Although the Army has good information about some categories of nonstockpile materiel, the amount and condition of other materiel are unknown. For example, the Army knows little about the agents inside recovered chemical weapons or the nature of contaminated materiel at former production plants. Also, the Army has little information on the nature and extent of buried chemical agents, which are estimated to be located at 215 sites in 33 states, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and Washington, D.C. The Army will need to comply with federal, state, and local laws; obtain the necessary environmental approvals and permits; and address the strong public opposition to chemical weapons incineration. On the basis of difficulties experienced in the stockpile disposal program, GAO believes that the Army's estimated cost of the nonstockpile program is likely to increase and its proposed schedule to slip.

GAO found that: (1) the Army has not finalized plans for its nonstockpile disposal program because it has not fully identified the amount of materiel to be destroyed or appropriate disposal methods; (2) the Army believes it can dispose of binary chemical weapons within 10 years for $190 million, miscellaneous chemical warfare materiel within 5 years for $210 million, and recovered chemical weapons within 10 years for $110 million; (3) the Army has limited information on buried chemical warfare materiel, which it estimates will take 40 years to find and destroy at a cost of $16.6 billion; (4) the Army's nonstockpile disposal program will likely be affected by the same issues as the stockpile program, including compliance with federal, state, and local laws and regulations, obtaining environmental approvals and permits, and strong public opposition to chemical weapons incineration and transportation; (5) although the Army said it applied lessons learned from the stockpile disposal program to the nonstockpile disposal program, its 1993 survey and analysis report on the nonstockpile program did not discuss those lessons; and (6) the Army's estimated cost and schedule for the nonstockpile disposal program are likely to increase, since the Army has limited experience in destroying nonstockpile materiel and will likely encounter difficulties similar to those experienced in the stockpile disposal program.

Recommendations

Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.

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