Tooele County, desperate for cash and buoyed by reports that deadly chemical weapons could be decontaminated, has requested that the nation's entire chemical arms stockpile be decontaminated and shipped to Tooele Army Depot for destruction.
But Gov. Mike Leavitt put the kibosh on the county's grand plans Thursday. He summoned the Tooele County Commission to his office and took them to task for inviting more chemical arms to the Beehive state.
"Frankly, your letter concerns me quite deeply," Leavitt told the three commissioners. "That's not the policy of this state."
The county's request was made last month in a letter to the National Academy of Sciences, which is studying methods of destroying chemical weapons and forwarding recommendations to the Army.
More than 42 percent of the nation's chemical weapons stockpile is stored at the Tooele Army Depot. The depot is also where the only incinerator in the country exists to burn the weapons on site, beginning in 1995.
Because of public safety concerns with the incineration process, the academy was asked last year by the Army to recommend alternative methods of destruction. And when Tooele commissioners heard about the academy's study of diluting chemical weapons to make them safer to handle, it saw an opportunity to bring in some revenue and preserve jobs.
Commissioners asked that the depot not only destroy its own cache of weapons, which contain deadly nerve and mustard agents. "We also urge that other chemical weapons stockpiles throughout the continental United States be reduced from class 5X wastes to class 3X wastes and transported to (Tooele Army Depot) for final incineration," the letter said.
The commission says 3X wastes are as harmful as household chemicals.
The county would also expect "substantial compensation" from the federal government, the letter said, similar to what commercial hazardous waste handlers based in Tooele County pay.
County commissioners noted in their letter that having Tooele handle the entire job would save taxpayers the cost of building incinerators at all stockpile sites around the country.
That has Leavitt worried.
"Your letter puts the state in a bad position. It just stops short of soliciting for this. We don't want them," Leavitt said.
He explained that other states with smaller stockpiles want to ship them to Utah and have put intense pressure on Congress and the Pentagon to allow it. In the mid-1980s, the Army concluded it would not transport chemical arms across state lines to Utah because of the hazards involved. But to politically appease states that want to ship away their stockpiles, Congress asked the Army last year to re-examine the possibility.
"We don't want to add fuel to that," Leavitt said.
He told the commissioners they should have talked with him before inviting researchers to consider Utah as the sole incineration site.
Following the lecture, commission chairman Leland Hogan told the Deseret News he is only responsible to his constituents. "I don't need to check with the governor before sending a letter," he said.
But the commission opted for Leavitt to write the academy to clarify the county's position is not Utah's. The governor said he or the county would write the letter.
The commissioners attempted to explain their predicament to Leavitt. Tooele is in desperate need of revenue because it lacks a tax base with 86 percent of its land under federal control. "We are hurting," Commissioner Teryl Hunsaker said, noting the county needs money to upgrade its hospital, schools and infrastructure.
But Leavitt responded that there are better options. "To bring weapons in is not our niche," he said.
The commissioners and Leavitt appeared to agree that if the weapons couldn't be decontaminated, the county would not accept them.
But reducing the potency of chemical weapons is a process that the academy is still studying and hasn't determined feasible, state science adviser Suzanne Winters said.
If dilution does prove feasible, however, shipping the downgraded weapons to Utah may not be the economical choice. Steve Petersen, an aide to Rep. Jim Hansen, R-Utah, said the process would be expensive and require nearly as much cost as incineration.
"The whole problem is handling this stuff safely. You don't dilute it in a wooden shack," he said. "So if you can build facilities to dismantle and dilute it then you might as well build an incinerator there too."
Steve Erickson, spokesman for local military watchdog group Downwinders, agreed. "If they can dilute it to a common hazardous waste there is no need to ship to Tooele to incinerate it," he said.