A senior Department of Defense official and community leaders discussed the recent elimination of the U.S. chemical weapons stockpile during a webinar sponsored by the Arms Control Association and the Chemical Weapons Convention Coalition Sept. 29.

“It’s hard to overstate the importance of the milestone we achieved in July. One hundred percent of the world’s declared chemical weapons have now been relegated to the ash-heap of history,” said Kingston Reif, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Threat Reduction and Arms Control. “For the first time, an entire category of declared weapons of mass destruction has been eliminated.”

During the seminar, the chairs of the Colorado and Kentucky Chemical Demilitarization Citizens’ Advisory Commissions, or CACs, shared their perspectives on the paths used to successfully eliminate the chemical weapons stockpiles stored at their respective U.S. Army depots in Pueblo, Colorado, and near Richmond, Kentucky.

Irene Kornelly, who has served on the Colorado CAC since 1996 and as chair since 2007, discussed how the commission provided input to the government’s plans for chemical weapons destruction to reduce perceived risks to local communities where the U.S. stockpiles were stored.

“The first thing we had to establish between the community in Pueblo and the Army was trust,” Kornelly said.

The CACs have been involved with all aspects of the destruction programs at their respective sites and provided input and recommendations on multiple topics, including water conservation in Colorado, with the result that the Pueblo plant recovered, recycled and reused the equivalent of 80% of its water. In Kentucky, an example of CAC involvement was their recommendation to proceed with the use of an Explosive Destruction Technology to enhance the main plant to increase worker safety in the destruction of the chemical weapons.  

Craig Williams, chair of the Kentucky CAC and co-chair of its Chemical Destruction Community Advisory Board subcommittee, discussed public involvement with the chemical weapons destruction program and their focus on safety.

“Over the periods of years of handling some of the most dangerous chemicals ever created in weaponized containers the safety record at Blue Grass has been nothing short of outstanding,” Williams said.