The Army appears to agree, but scientists aren't convinced that the nation's chemical arms shouldn't be decontaminated and shipped to Tooele Army Depot, where the nation's only chemical-weapons incinerator is being readied for operation.
Gov. Mike Leavitt sent letters this week to the Army and the National Academy of Sciences to counter an apparent solicitation by the Tooele County Commission that neutralized chemical weapons are welcome to the financially strapped county.Leavitt feared the county's offer could suggest to other states that have chemical-weapons stockpiles that Utah will take them.
"It has been the position of the previous administration and will continue to be my position to oppose any transport of chemical munitions from outside of Utah for disposal at the Tooele Army Depot incineration facility," Leavitt wrote. "This position stands regardless of the classification of the munitions waste."
Leavitt said Utah agreed to dispose of its share of the chemical stockpile, which at 42 percent is by far the largest, and nothing more. "I will actively oppose transport to Utah for destruction of munitions from outside our state," he wrote.
The Army decided in 1988 not to ship chemical arms across state lines, and Congress has prohibited the Pentagon from re-examining the option. But Congress has also asked the Army to consider alternatives to incinerating chemical weapons.
An academy committee is examining those alternatives. Its investigation has turned up a method of neutralizing the nerve and mustard agents in the weapons and ton-containers, reducing the deadly chemicals to household hazardous waste.
Tooele County commissioners, desperate for cash and jobs, wrote the academy in July, urging it to adopt the neutralization method and send the decontaminated arms to TAD for disposal.
"It's a reasonable request," said John M. Longwell, chairman of the academy's committee looking into chemical-arms destruction.
"The governor thinks it will turn Utah into a dumping ground. But he is a politician and he is wrong."
Longwell agrees with Tooele County that neutralization could be a safe means of preserving jobs. The TAD incinerator will employ about 500 during destruction of the stockpile in the depot's south area - about 20 miles south of the city of Tooele.
But he added that neutralization would be expensive, and it wouldn't make sense to ship something to Tooele that could be disposed of in any hazardous landfill.
While neutralization may make sense, it is not as safe as incineration, said Longwell, professor emeritus of chemical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
"If you (neutralize) the agent there are all kinds of nooks and crannies that you can't get into," he said. "But heating the material at high temperatures (incineration) really does the job. It's the most reliable way to be certain you have destroyed all the agent."
The Army agrees. It tested neutralizing agent in the late 1970s at a pilot plant at Tooele Army Depot. But the process of adding more liquid chemicals to neutralize the deadly agents created six-to-seven times more waste to dispose of, said Dave Jackson, project manager at the Tooele destruction facility.
The Army and activists in other states that want to get rid of their stockpiles said Leavitt need not fear the Tooele County recommendation will lead to a political campaign to send the arms to Utah.
The Army would recommend against it. "Think of the safety precautions and risks we have at Tooele. Think of that along a 2,000 mile transportation corridor," said assistant secretary to the Army Michael Owen.
Transporting chemical arms without decontamination, he said, would require an effort larger than the airlift to Saudi Arabia preparing for the Persian Gulf conflict.