On Jan. 30, the Army, through the Joint Project Manager for Elimination (JPM-E), completed a chapter in U.S. history with the closure of the seventh and final chemical weapons disposal facility for which it had responsibility.
The Umatilla Chemical Agent Disposal Facility (UMCDF) in Oregon received approval for the termination of its Resource Conservation and Recovery Act treatment, storage, and disposal permit from the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality.
Army facilities that previously closed include the Aberdeen Chemical Agent Disposal Facility (ABCDF) in 2007, Johnston Atoll Chemical Agent Disposal System (JACADS) in 2009, the Newport Chemical Agent Disposal Facility (NECDF) in 2010, the Pine Bluff Chemical Agent Disposal Facility (PBCDF) in 2013, and the Anniston Chemical Agent Disposal Facility (ANCDF) and Tooele Chemical Agent Disposal Facility (TOCDF) in 2014.
The safe and environmentally compliant closure of the UMCDF marks the end of a project that destroyed 12 percent of the U.S. chemical weapons stockpile 935 days ahead of contract schedule, which resulted in more than $336 million of net contract savings.
The closure of the UMCDF caps off a program that, under the auspices of the U.S. Army Chemical Materials Agency (CMA), safely destroyed 90 percent of the nation's chemical weapons stockpile, or 27,473.65 tons of nerve and blister agents, while slashing a total of 256 months off of disposal facility schedules for a total cost avoidance of more than $4 billion.
"The Army destroyed those chemical weapons and closed those facilities with an incredible record of safety, environmental compliance, and stewardship of taxpayer dollars," said Carmen Spencer, DoD's Joint Program Executive for Chemical and Biological Defense. "The Army's Chemical Demilitarization Program has truly made the world a safer place, and I'm very proud of the men and women who successfully completed this mission."
The remainder of the U.S. chemical weapons stockpile, currently stored at Blue Grass Army Depot in Kentucky and Pueblo Chemical Depot in Colorado, will be destroyed by the Department of Defense under the Program Executive Office -- Assembled Chemical Weapons Alternatives.
After acquiring more than 20 years of experience in chemical weapons destruction as part of the CMA, the Project Manager for Chemical Stockpile Elimination was redesignated as JPM-E and realigned under the Joint Program Executive Office for Chemical and Biological Defense in August 2013. JPM-E personnel have managed the closure of all former chemical weapons destruction facilities. Many directors who managed the closure process also provided oversight for different components of the chemical weapons destruction process, not only seeing the Army program through from beginning to end, but also contributing greatly to cost savings, schedule reductions and low injury rates.
Following intergovernmental discussion of a chemical and biological weapons ban that the then 18-nation Disarmament Committee initiated in 1968, the U.S. Congress in 1985 mandated all chemical weapons stockpiles at Johnston Atoll be destroyed, which began the pilot mission that would be followed by several equally significant chemical weapons disposal projects throughout the country.
JACADS, located on Johnston Island in the Pacific Ocean, operated from 1990 to 2000 as the U.S. Army's first chemical munitions disposal facility using incineration. Johnston Atoll stored approximately 6.6 percent of the country's stockpile of chemical weapons, including the nerve agents sarin and VX.
The 1993 signing by the U.S. of the Chemical Weapons Convention, a treaty administered by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, turned the U.S. goal of becoming a chemical-weapons-free nation into an international promise. The Chemical Weapons Convention entered into force in 1997.
The completion of chemical weapons stockpile destruction at all former facilities is a testament to the commitment by the U.S. to that promise, according to Richard Eichholtz, associate project manager for JPM-E.
The Army used systems contractors under the management of chemical weapons disposal experts at CMA and later JPM-E to design, build, systemize, operate, decontaminate and demolish the seven chemical agent disposal facilities. CMA and JPM-E maintained stringent standards for safety of workers, the public, and the environment and worked closely with state regulators and other oversight agencies.
Closure of the chemical disposal facilities was a rigorous process accomplished through several detailed steps.
First, each closing facility's operating team defined the contamination history of the facility to develop a decontamination strategy. Any leaks or spills that occurred during destruction operations would have been documented, so a thorough records review was conducted to identify and define the extent of contamination in preparation for closure.
During the next phase, the operating team defined the appropriate methods for decontaminating the equipment in the facility in a detailed Equipment Decontamination Plan, which was reviewed and approved by the project manager or site commander.
Upon approval of the methods stated in the EDP, the team conducted an occluded space survey of the entire facility to identify any hidden or obscured areas where chemical agent contamination may have become trapped. The team then dismantled or exposed equipment and areas that the occluded space survey designated as agent-contaminated, and thoroughly decontaminated all equipment and areas.
In order to triple-check their work, team members performed headspace monitoring of the equipment and areas they had previously attempted to decontaminate. Headspace monitoring meant allowing the recently decontaminated item or area to dry, and then bagging the item or tenting the area with plastic. The item or area was then allowed the potential to off-gas for a specified amount of time. Off-gassing allowed any chemical agent that may have still been present to release into the bag or tent, where it could be detected by monitors.
By individually clearing all items suspected of contamination, the team was reasonably confident that the entire room would meet the clearance standard when monitored. The final test for each room was an unventilated monitoring test. Once a room met clearance standards for unventilated monitoring, it was cleared for mass demolition, according to Brian O'Donnell, JPM-E director of Infrastructure Decontamination and Recovery.
O'Donnell led the closure process for the ABCDF at Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland, the first facility in the continental United States to close. The ABCDF used neutralization technology to destroy 1,622 tons of mustard agent stored in ton containers.
"ABCDF laid the groundwork for the rest of the sites we closed. We took a minimalistic approach in the decontamination of the facility by implementing mass demolition, which was safer and saved money because workers weren't taking the risk or time to manually take apart the facility," said O'Donnell.
Eichholtz led the teams at TOCDF and UMCDF through closure and can attest to the enormity of the undertaking and the significance of the accomplishment of the chemical weapons stockpile destruction mission.
"When you stop and look at what we've accomplished, destroying that stockpile, that's a heck of a lot of absolutely horrible stuff to have around, and it's gone," said Eichholtz.
By destroying nearly 90 percent of the nation's stockpile of chemical agent, or 27,473.65 tons of nerve and blister agents, the U.S. has made tremendous progress in accomplishing its goal of ridding the nation and the international community of chemical weapons. Chemical weapons destruction experts have managed to not only ensure the completion of the destruction of the weapons, but they have also guided and executed safe and highly efficient operations with regards to cost and schedule, producing a record of which any industry would be envious.
Five chemical agent disposal facilities earned Star Status under the Occupational Safety and Health Administrations' Voluntary Protection Program, and the overall recordable incident rates at the chemical agent disposal facilities were comparable to those found in the banking and financial services industries. Chemical weapons destruction experts at the sites developed a safety culture they were able to maintain by effectively communicating within their sites and among the other sites daily.
During UMCDF's closure phase, employees worked 36 months without a lost-workday injury, which translated to 11.9 million hours.
Keith Davidson, who served as the safety manager for the four incineration sites throughout destruction and closure operations, believes careful monitoring of the "near misses" greatly contributed to the excellence of the safety culture.
"One of the sites removed the adhesive bandages from the first aid kits. People would bump into something sharp and cut their arm and just get a bandage without reporting the incident," said Davidson. "By making people report the incident to get a bandage, we were able to track the minor injuries, the small things, and implement precautions to prevent those injuries, which in turn prevented larger injuries."
The prevention of larger injuries contributed to the significant time- and cost-savings by avoiding pauses in operations. According to TOCDF Safety Engineer Trace Salmon, halting an operation due to an injury resulted in considerable time and effort.
"In the chemical demilitarization world, quite often if you made a mistake you had to shut down and analyze why you did something wrong, and fix the root cause before resuming operations," said Salmon. "Those safety stand-downs were day-for-day slips in the schedule. If you get to the point where you're doing things right the first time and you don't have stand-downs, you also don't have the cost of doing the work a second time."
By adopting a zero-tolerance workforce safety mentality, chemical weapons destruction experts improved overall operations.
JPM-E Director of Research and Technology Cheryl Maggio has worked on the mission for 26 years -- designing, testing, building and overseeing the operations of the chemical weapons destruction facilities. She said the workforce demonstrated its dedication to the mission by embracing the importance of safety.
"We had a healthy, very dedicated workforce, and as a result the numbers they pulled in were phenomenal," said Maggio. "Running a chemical agent disposal plant turned out to be safer than working at a library in terms of the health numbers and overall statistics."
Innovative contracting practices such as performance incentives also played a key role in the completion of the mission, specifically the significant reduction of the mission's schedule.
The government field office at each site conducted monthly assessments of the systems contractor and fed the information back to the systems contractor to inform them of their performance. Each six months concluded with an award fee period in which the systems contractor could receive a monetary bonus for completing milestones ahead of schedule.
By working increasingly more efficiently month after month, four incineration chemical weapons destruction sites -- TOCDF, UMCDF, ANCDF and PBCDF -- shaved a total of 256 months off of their schedules and avoided a total cost of more than $4 billion. "The incentives drove a lot of innovation and performance to get the job done," said Lloyd Pusey, who served as an associate project manager for UMCDF.
Using proven strategies and lessons learned from all previous chemical weapons destruction facilities, JPM-E personnel brought their unique skills and expertise to bear during the 2014 mission to destroy Syria's declared chemical agent stockpile at sea aboard the MV Cape Ray using the Field Deployable Hydrolysis System (FDHS).
Many of the same JPM-E chemical weapons destruction experts who contributed to the success of the U.S. chemical weapons stockpile destruction mission were instrumental in the development of the FDHS and its deployment in the shipboard mission that destroyed more than 600 tons of Syrian chemical warfare materiel in 42 days. In fact, four JPM-E chemical weapons destruction experts deployed aboard the Cape Ray as members of the task force that destroyed the Syrian chemical warfare materiel.
The FDHS destroys bulk chemical warfare materiel using neutralization, a technology first used in 2003 to destroy the chemical weapons at ABCDF in Maryland, and then again in 2005 to destroy the chemical weapons at NECDF in Indiana. One of the FDHS units even used a mixing vessel -- one of the system's core components -- from ABCDF, demonstrating the versatility of the technology and the capability of team members to adapt their expertise to various situations.
Now, with decades of extensive experience treating weaponized and non-weaponized chemical agent, JPM-E remains at the ready to adapt capabilities to conduct any WMD destruction operation worldwide. With a dedicated team of talented scientists, engineers and support personnel, JPM-E continues to build upon lessons learned, adjust and improve existing technologies, and explore emerging solutions to improve capabilities to meet any critical need.
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