Kentucky Starts Criminal Probe of Army Chemical Weapons Depot

FRANKFORT, Kentucky, November 6, 2007 (ENS) - The Kentucky Department of Environmental Protection has cited a U.S. Army chemical weapons facility for improper storage, testing and training. Some of the violations may be prosecuted as crimes, according to a state inspection report.

The October 31 Site Inspection Report details notices of violations issued against the Blue Grass Army Depot, located outside of Richmond, 30 miles south of Lexington.

The depot stores more than 500 tons of chemical warfare agents, including lethal nerve gas, in storage units called igloos. Blue Grass is one of eight Army facilities where agents are being destroyed under the international Chemical Weapons Treaty.

As a result of the inspection, the state has referred evidence of activities at the Blue Grass Army Depot "considered of a potentially criminal nature" to the criminal investigations branch of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, as well as to the Kentucky Environmental and Public Protection Cabinet’s Office of the Inspector General.

The three most serious issues are allegations of a cover-up of an employee's exposure to harmful levels of chemical agent, inconsistencies in monitoring log signatures, and the demotion of an employee who refused to sign off on a standard operating procedure.

The review addressed 40 allegations of improper procedures at the depot. The complainants wished to remain anonymous.

Violations verified by the Kentucky DEP inspectors include not testing spills from rockets containing agent that are stored inside the igloos. They found improper storage practices which crush the shells of rockets and cause leaks, and failure to ensure that employees are properly trained to prevent release of chemical warfare agents.

Army Spokesman Dave Easter said the violations were basically "an administrative issue."

The Blue Grass Army Depot is also the subject of a federal criminal grand jury probe as well as whistleblower complaints that have been lodged by chemists, security agents and technicians.

In addition, Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, PEER, a national association of workers in natural resources agencies, claims that "Blue Grass staff may have been exposed to nerve agent but never notified or monitored."

"Managers 'scrub' or falsify monitoring reports, and in some instances turn off monitoring equipment to mask problems," PEER alleges, and adds that "The base routinely transfers or blackballs whistleblowers."

"This report appears to vindicate the whistleblowers even while leaving many very troubling questions unresolved," said PEER Executive Director Jeff Ruch, an attorney whose organization is representing depot whistleblowers. "People who report problems do not stay long at Blue Grass."

Ruch says some of the issues that were beyond the scope of Kentucky DEP’s review and so were left unaddressed, are "even more disturbing."

They include "the absence of procedures to tell whether chemical agents are in the wastewater that is flushed from the igloos" and reconfiguration of air monitors inside the igloos "to be ineffective."

Craig Williams, director of the nonprofit Chemical Weapons Working Group based in Berea, Kentucky, said he is troubled by the number of criminal allegations that have been referred for further investigation.

Copyright Environment News Service (ENS) 2007. All rights reserved.