Mr.
Chairman and members of the Committee, I am
Michael Parker and I am pleased to have the
opportunity to address this committee.
I consider it an honor to serve as
the Director of the U.S. Army Chemical
Materials Agency.
In this capacity, I am responsible
for the safe storage and disposal of the
U.S.
chemical weapons stockpile and non-stockpile
materiel.
My
mandate is destruction of
U.S.
chemical materiel while providing maximum
safety to our workers, the public, and the
environment.
While my program must adhere to
schedules, meet international treaty
deadlines, and remain within budget, I want
to emphasize right up front, and throughout
my testimony, that our primary consideration
is safety to the public as well as the
workforce.
Our
mission, in conjunction with the
Department of Homeland Security, includes
the Chemical Stockpile Emergency
Preparedness Program that enhances emergency
response capabilities on chemical stockpile
storage installations and in surrounding
communities. In
addition, under the Cooperative Threat
Reduction Program, we provide chemical
weapons destruction assistance to
Russia
and other nations of the former
Soviet Union
. The
Chemical Materials Agency, which is still
provisional, was formed earlier this year by
combining the missions of the former Program
Manager for Chemical Demilitarization with
the chemical storage function of the former
Soldier and Biological Chemical Command.
The Chemical Materials Agency concept
plan is being finalized, and we expect to be
able to formalize the new organization
within the next few weeks.
The new organization will resolve
several issues raised by the General
Accounting Office in its recent report Chemical
Weapons: Sustained Leadership, Along with
Key Strategic Management Tools, Is Needed to
Guide DOD's Destruction Program.
It establishes clear oversight
relationships and removes fragmentation that
has previously hampered execution of the
Program.
We have stepped up strategic planning
and risk management efforts that will help
us to be able to more effectively manage to
the goals we set for ourselves, track our
progress, and monitor our performance.
Our
program is subject to intense oversight from
the Department of Defense and Department of
the Army.
Mr. Claude Bolton, the Assistant
Secretary of the Army for Acquisition,
Logistics & Technology and the Army
Acquisition Executive, provides oversight
and has overall program responsibility.
The Chemical Demilitarization Program
is a Category 1-D Major Acquisition Program.
The Honorable Michael Wynne, Acting
Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition,
Technology, and Logistics and the Defense
Acquisition Executive, serves as the
milestone decision authority.
General Paul Kern, Commander, U.S.
Army Materiel Command, exercises oversight
for storage functions and the operational
aspects of chemical disposal.
Since
this Program’s inception almost 20 years
ago, we have had many successes, and
encountered many challenges.
Our focus on the ultimate goal to
destroy all U.S. chemical warfare material
while ensuring maximum protection to the
public, the workers, and the environment has
remained constant.
Presently,
three disposal facilities in the continental
United States are operating.
Our facility at Deseret Chemical
Depot, Utah is processing VX nerve agent in
rockets, projectiles, and ton containers.
Our disposal facility in Anniston,
Alabama has been processing GB nerve agent
in rockets since early August and has
surpassed expectations.
In its first 40 days of operation,
the Anniston facility processed 652 more
munitions than the combined amount that the
Tooele facility and the pilot facility at
Johnston Island processed in their first 40
days while maintaining an excellent safety
record.
In April of this year, we began
neutralization operations of mustard agent
in ton containers at Aberdeen, Maryland, two
years ahead of its original construction
schedule.
The Aberdeen facility is the first of
its kind, and we have encountered challenges
there that required us to slow down the
ramp-up schedule for agent operations.
We have demonstrated that the
technology works on an industrial level,
having successfully destroyed 111,470 pounds
of the blister agent Mustard, and it is now
up to us to work out the kinks.
I have confidence that our workers at
Aberdeen will live up to the task.
Additionally, all three operating
disposal facilities recently passed the
Department of the Army Inspector General
Chemical Surety Inspection, demonstrating
that chemical agent operations are conducted
in a safe, secure and reliable manner.
Our
pilot facility on Johnston Island, which
finished operations nearly three years ago,
has almost completed closure.
All secondary waste has been
processed, equipment has been
decommissioned, and buildings demolished.
A formal closure ceremony is planned
for November 4-5 of this year.
We are proud of this achievement, and
have learned many lessons from the Johnston
Island work that will help us to improve
operations and closure for the remaining
facilities.
Facilities
at Umatilla, Oregon; Pine Bluff, Arkansas
and Newport, Indiana, are expected to start
agent operations soon.
These facilities are profiting from
the tremendous operating experience gained
during pilot operations at Johnston Island
and the facilities that are currently
operating.
The
Assembled Chemical Weapons Alternatives
Program identified destruction technologies
for the two remaining stockpile sites at
Pueblo, Colorado and Blue Grass, Kentucky.
Both sites will use
neutralization-based agent destruction
methods.
Presently, in accordance with public
law, these facilities are managed separately
under the Assembled Chemical Weapons
Alternatives Program and are not currently
under the purview of the Chemical Materials
Agency.
We
take pride in having destroyed more than 26
percent of the original U.S. chemical
stockpile, and we have done so safely and in
an environmentally sound manner.
Each chemical munition destroyed
makes our citizens safer.
In the emergency preparedness area,
all storage installations have achieved and
are maintaining full readiness to respond to
an emergency.
We are working with the Department of
Homeland Security, state, and local
emergency management agencies to help the
communities around the chemical storage
installations enhance their emergency
response capabilities.
We have accomplished a great deal,
the great majority of equipment is in place
and operational in all states.
We worked with the State of Alabama
to develop a solution that addresses the
preparedness concerns of the citizens in
Calhoun County and surrounding counties and
enabled us to start operations at the
Anniston disposal facility.
Just this month we completed the
over-pressurization of schools in Alabama
identified by local elected officials.
Preparedness requirements have
evolved, and in some cases the equipment
that was provided previously is nearing the
end of its shelf life, requiring
replacement.
We are working with the Department of
Homeland Security to forecast out-year
requirements such that the budget request to
the Congress will reflect these preparedness
requirements more fully.
Overall,
we have not been able to move destruction
along as quickly as originally envisioned.
Earlier this year we developed cost
and schedule estimates for a new Acquisition
Program Baseline, which the Defense
Acquisition Executive approved in April.
We took a good look at what we really
can do, from a technical and operational
perspective, and concluded that we must plan
conservatively.
The new Acquisition Program Baseline
places objectives for completion of disposal
activities at all facilities between 2008
and 2011, except for the Blue Grass site,
for which schedules are currently being
developed.
The new Acquisition Program Baseline
is based on a schedule that we believe is
achievable.
Congressional support of the
President’s budget proposal is therefore
essential for us to stay on track.
Due to the technical complexity of
chemical disposal operations and constantly
evolving regulations and new interpretations
of existing regulations that impact our
program, we will always face unforeseen
challenges that sometimes make a schedule
extension hard to avoid.
Inevitably, cost increases are
associated with the resolution of these
issues.
We are doing what we can to address
them and to find creative solutions that
enable us to overcome technical challenges,
continually improve our excellent safety
record, achieve and maintain environmental
compliance, and minimize cost and schedule
impacts.
Let me say again, to do this requires
full program funding.
The Secretary of Defense has
challenged us to take all available measures
to move the Program forward as quickly as
possible, and we are working hard to meet
this challenge.
Let
me offer some examples of the significant
issues we currently face.
Recently, the Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention promulgated new
Airborne Exposure Limits for nerve agents,
and the standards for mustard agent are
expected by spring of next year.
These new more stringent limits will
require us to monitor for these chemical
agents at much lower levels than we have
previously.
Although we have technology that is
capable of detecting chemical agent at these
extremely low levels, it is proven only in a
laboratory environment and application to a
plant setting will be problematic.
Under operating conditions, there are
many chemicals that are not chemical warfare
agent that interfere with chemical agent
monitors.
The lower our monitoring levels, the
higher the probability of interference that
causes false alarms.
More false alarms slow operations and
lower worker confidence in the monitoring
program, which in turn undermines the
overall safety program.
As I said before, we are working to
meet this challenge.
Public
outreach continues to be vital to our
mission.
Our outreach program has received
superb ratings from the Department of
Defense Inspector General, and the outreach
program for the accelerated Aberdeen
Chemical Agent Disposal Facility received
the Department of the Army Community
Relations Award of Excellence in 2002.
We continue to inform and work with
citizens to increase public understanding
and support of our mission.
Many headlines recently have focused
on public opposition to the plan to ship
hydrolysate from VX neutralization
operations at Newport, Indiana, to Permafix,
a licensed disposal facility located in
Dayton, Ohio.
On October 13, Parsons, the
Newport Systems Contractor, issued a stop
work order to Permafix at its Dayton, Ohio
site, and is beginning efforts to terminate
the contract for convenience based upon an
inability to obtain certain necessary
regulatory approvals.
The Army feels this is a prudent step
taken by Parsons that will allow necessary
time for the project to evaluate other
options and determine a path forward for
hydrolysate disposal.
Off-site disposal of agent
hydrolysate was an integral part of the
proposal approved by the Defense Acquisition
Executive to accelerate neutralization of
agent stored in ton containers at two sites.
This method currently performs well
at our Aberdeen, Maryland site.
If we cannot identify a suitable
off-site disposal facility for the agent
hydrolysate from Newport, we will
temporarily store hydrolysate on-site,
subject to environmental regulatory
approval, until a final disposal option has
been identified.
The
last point I would like to discuss is
compliance with the Chemical Weapons
Convention.
This treaty sets timelines for
destruction of chemical weapons, all of
which we have met or exceeded to date.
The next major milestone requires the
destruction of 45% of all Category I
chemical weapons by April 29, 2004.
The deadline for destruction of 100%
of Category I chemical weapons is April 29,
2007. The
treaty permits extensions to these deadlines
if requested by the state party and approved
by the Conference of States Parties to the Organisation
for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW). With our
current destruction schedule, we will not be
able to meet the existing deadlines under
the Chemical Weapons Convention.
As a result, last month the United
States formally submitted a request for an
extension of the Chemical Weapons Convention
45% deadline from April 2004 to December
2007. I
am pleased to report that the Conference of
States Parties to the OPCW approved our
extension request late last week.
We are confident we can meet the
revised December 2007 date.
We consider it important to continue
to meet our international obligations and to
maintain our leadership role in chemical
demilitarization.
Let me also emphasize that the United
States is not the only Government that has
found it necessary to request an extension
to the destruction deadlines established
under the Chemical Weapons Convention.
It is most important to conduct our
mission safely, and we will not sacrifice
safety for speed.
We owe this to our workers and the
citizens living near the chemical storage
sites, to assure them that we are doing this
job without endangering them.
I
have come before you today to assure you
that we will get this job done, no matter
what challenges we face, and to ask for your
support to this crucial mission.
Let me reiterate that the best way
Congress can help us is to fully fund the
Chemical Demilitarization Program as
outlined in the President’s budget.
We share the common goal of
destroying these weapons as safely and
expeditiously as possible, and we want to
get that message across to your
constituents.
Your public support of our Program
can make a vital difference.
All of us will be safer once we have
disposed of the last chemical weapon on U.S.
soil. At
the same time, we are making the United
States more secure by extending a helping
hand to Russia to aid them in their disposal
efforts.
Thank you again for allowing me to
address this Committee today, and I look
forward to your questions.
