Facility now expects to have remaining 4,100 tons of agent destroyed by 2013

Just more than two-thirds of the original chemical agents stored at the Deseret Chemical Depot have now been destroyed, putting the facility on track for complete agent destruction in 2013, according to Alaine Grieser, spokeswoman for the Deseret Chemical Depot.

Of the 13,617 original tons of mustard and nerve agents at DCD, there are 4,100 tons left to be destroyed. The work began in 1996.

Roughly 45 percent of the nation's chemical weapons have been stored at the Deseret Chemical Depot.

In 2007, approximately 3.5 million pounds of mustard agent were destroyed at the Tooele Chemical Agent Disposal Facility. The facility, located at the Deseret Chemical Depot and operated by EG&G Defense Materials, completed the destruction of its entire stockpile of GB nerve agent in 2002, and VX nerve agent in June 2005. Mustard agent, four tons of GA nerve agent, and 10 tons of lewisite, a blister agent, are left to be destroyed.Stockpiles of chemical weapons are being destroyed in Kentucky, Colorado, Oregon, Arkansas, Alabama and Indiana, in addition to the work being done at DCD.

The TOCDF uses high-temperature incineration technology for chemical disposal.

"This year we destroyed more agent here at the Deseret Chemical Depot than any of the other neutralization facilities or the other burn facilities did in a one-year period," said Grieser, adding this is because the technology at the facility has been used for 10 years.

"We should have it [the technology] pretty well perfected," she said.

More than one-third of the total mustard agent has been destroyed at the facility. The original amount was 12 million pounds, and 4 million pounds have already been destroyed.

The TOCDF began processing mustard agent in August 2006. They recently took a break from processing ton containers and have moved on to 155-mm projectiles.

The facility is on schedule for destruction of all agents in early 2013, although the official date, for budgetary reasons, is 2017.

"Our goals are of course a bit more aggressive than what the original reports say, and so that's why we say 2013, but it's one of those statistics that slides one way or the other depending on budget," Grieser said.

According to the U.S. Army Chemical Materials Agency, as of Dec. 10, 2007, 50 percent of the nation's chemical agent stockpile had been destroyed since the beginning of the Chemical Weapons Convention — a 1997 international treaty with set deadlines for the destruction of chemical weapons stockpiles. The treaty set a final deadline of April 29, 2012, for the destruction of all chemical weapons, but the Pentagon has said it will not finish the work by then. In November, a provision in a defense spending measure was approved that set a 2017 disposal deadline.

Sarah Miley: swest@tooeletranscript.com