Army chemical weapons storage workers reach safety milestones

Deseret Chemical Depot (DCD), located in Utah, and Blue Grass Chemical Activity (BGCA), located at Blue Grass Army Depot in Kentucky, are both subordinate units of the U.S. Army Chemical Materials Activity (CMA), headquartered at Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland.

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration defines a recordable injury as any work-related injury that requires treatment above first aid; is diagnosed as significant by a licensed health care professional; or that results in loss of consciousness, death, days away from work, restricted work, or transfer to another job. The recordable injury rate (RIR) is a 12-month rolling average among all the organization's government employees.

Deseret Chemical Depot is a former CMA installation that once stored the nation's largest and most diverse chemical weapons stockpile. That stockpile was safely eliminated in February 2012 at the Tooele Chemical Agent Disposal Facility (TOCDF), a chemical agent incineration facility located on the installation. After the safe elimination of the chemical weapons stockpile, depot's primary missions were the handling and monitoring of hazardous and agent-contaminated waste and preparation for the turnover of the installation to the nearby Tooele Army Depot (TEAD) in July 2013.

The depot workforce steadily decreased in size, with about 400 employees prior to stockpile elimination; 250 in June 2012; 130 in March 2013; and 30 on July 11, 2013, when the depot was transferred from CMA to TEAD.

During the 12-month period in which the zero RIR was achieved, DCD employees completed the delivery of thousands of barrels of chemical agent-contaminated waste materials from storage structures to the Drum Ventilation System Sorting Room located in the storage area. There, workers monitored, sorted, and categorized the waste for disposal. The waste was generated over the course of 70 years of chemical weapons storage and disposal at DCD.

With CMA's chemical weapons disposal mission at DCD complete, depot employees were handed the task to clean and monitor all former chemical storage structures to ensure compliance with the depot's Resource Conservation and Recovery Act permits. Employees cleaned and monitored 208 storage igloos and 34 warehouses that had formerly housed chemical agents, according to DCD Commander Col. Mark Pomeroy.

During the same period, employees were required to prepare all of the depot's equipment for turn in. Every piece of equipment, from computers to forklifts to modular trailers, was inspected and inventoried.

"These activities were a significant change from the work we'd been doing prior to stockpile elimination and, as we know, with change comes added risk," Pomeroy said. "We started closure activities about two years ago, and we invested early-on in training on things like lifting and moving equipment."

Pomeroy said DCD experienced an initial increase in its RIR as it transitioned from chemical weapons storage operations to closure operations, but said the safety culture embraced by DCD employees enabled them to identify new risks and react quickly.

"We learned some things very quickly, like putting folks in personal protective equipment (PPE) even when moving simple things like pallets because there are preservatives in the wood that can cause skin irritation," Pomeroy said. "We learned that just as we needed PPE for chemical operations, we needed PPE for standard operations, so we started putting our folks in jumpsuits."

Pomeroy said that as the months rolled by without a recordable injury, employees began to see that the goal of achieving a zero RIR was within reach.

"When you have a goal like that in front of you, it really brings safety to mind in everything that you do," Pomeroy said. "We emphasized to the workforce that nothing we were doing was worth the risk of life or limb. It was just a continual focus on safety and never letting our guard down."

While the DCD employees have spent the last year preparing for closure following completion of the stockpile destruction mission there, the 121 employees at Blue Grass Chemical Activity have been storing and managing a chemical weapons stockpile comprised of 523 tons of weaponized chemical agent. BGCA employees are responsible for the safe and secure storage of one of the nation's two remaining chemical weapons stockpiles, which are scheduled for destruction under the DoD's Assembled Chemical Weapons Alternatives (ACWA) program. Among the chemical weapons in the custody of BGCA are the nation's last remaining stockpiled nerve agents.

According to BGCA Commander Lt. Col. Christopher Grice, employees are charged with a myriad of tasks from conducting chemical operations to performing in-house maintenance on electronics and equipment.

"On any given day, I have employees inside igloos inspecting the condition of munitions, the condition of the wooden pallets that the munitions rest on, and the condition of the storage magazines themselves," Grice said. "They're out there in the storage area in PPE, dealing with heat stress, reduced vision, and reduced manual dexterity. They're operating forklifts and other heavy equipment."

BGCA employees routinely monitor the chemical storage igloos using Real Time Analytical Platforms -- vehicles equipped with chemical agent monitoring equipment -- to check for leaking munitions. When required, BGCA employees conduct leaker isolation and overpack operations inside the storage igloos.

Additionally, the activity operates its own warehouse and maintenance facility where PPE is cleaned, inspected, and repaired. The activity also maintains its own self-contained breathing apparatus.

The Blue Grass stockpile will be destroyed by ACWA's Blue Grass Chemical Agent-Destruction Pilot Plant, which is currently under construction. BGCA employees will perform many tasks in support of the destruction effort, and training on unique equipment to be used for M55 rocket separation operations is now underway. Likewise, facilities in the chemical weapons storage area are being upgraded to prepare for increased use.

"There's a lot of construction ongoing in the BGCA area of operations," Grice said. "It's a changing environment, and that brings an element of risk."

Mitigating that risk and safely executing the many tasks necessary to the unit's mission can only be accomplished by a professional workforce, according to Grice.

"If the workforce isn't willing to embrace safety, then we won't safely complete our mission," he said.

Activity Safety Officer Scott Wilson agreed. "Safety is a continuous process," he said. "We must have employee buy-in to make our operating culture a safety culture. We're fortunate in that we have a workforce of experienced professionals who look out for each other. They take safety seriously."

According to Wilson, employees are full partners with leadership in the safety process. An employee safety committee meets regularly to discuss employee safety concerns and elevate issues and recommendations to leadership.

Additionally, safety suggestion boxes have been placed at various locations in the activity operations area, and Wilson said the boxes generate excellent suggestions that are individually logged and tracked.

"When folks see their safety suggestions being implemented they become invested in the safety process," Wilson said. "Leadership also does a great job of seeking out and recognizing safety excellence among our workforce."

Both Pomeroy and Grice noted that cross-pollination of safety ideas among various CMA elements was one of the factors that enabled their workforces to excel.

"We've had the opportunity to follow behind seven very successful CMA chemical weapons storage sites," Grice said. "We've had the opportunity to learn from their successes and from their mistakes."

That cross-pollination of the CMA safety culture is something that the CMA headquarters safety staff has worked to build into the safety program, according to CMA Safety Manager Keith Davidson.

"We have a headquarters safety manager assigned to each site, and we've worked to foster an environment of cross-site integration," Davidson said. "Our safety managers and safety engineers conduct site safety evaluations and assistance visits on a regular basis, and we share lessons learned across all the sites during monthly safety discussions."

Alan Cushen, CMA's chief of occupational health and safety, noted that this accomplishment is the result of leadership emphasis, from the director of CMA to the first line supervisor.

"Four years ago, the director of CMA challenged the organization to achieve an RIR of zero," Cushen said. "It was a stretch goal, but if we didn't set the goal, we knew we'd never get there. The emphasis was there from the top to the bottom."

"This isn't something the headquarters safety office did," Cushen continued. "This is something the employees at DCD and BGCA did. This is what happens when employees take individual ownership of the safety program. It was a true team effort."

The result of that effort is a safety record that more closely resembles the risks associated with working in the financial sector than the hazardous waste disposal industry.

"Typically, you find very low RIRs in white-collar workplaces, like the financial sector," Davidson said. "The tasks our workforce performs compare most closely to hazardous waste disposal, which has an industry-wide RIR of 3.6."

Cushen said the Army can learn a lot about teamwork from the employees at DCD and BGCA. "No one thing caused this, no one person accomplished this," he said. "It was team effort, task by task, day by day, and it's a great leadership success from top to bottom."