Hidden Stores of Poison

For the past five years, Colorado authorities have been planning to build a new $22 million runway for Denver's Stapleton International Airport on about 600 acres of land belonging to the U.S. Army's Rocky Mountain Arsenal. The Army turned over the deed to the land in 1969, but as late as last May, it was forbidding jets to fly over the area because of unspecified "safety factors." Denver Mayor William H. McNichols finally went to Washington to find out what was causing the delay. He soon learned. Beneath the prospective flight approach, the Army still maintains a stockpile of millions of pounds of lethal nerve gas. "It took us completely by surprise," says McNichols. "The stockpile was supposed to be gone."

The nerve gas kills so swiftly that inspectors carry live rabbits to warn them (by dying) of any leaks. In 1968, the Army had promised to move or "demilitarize," i.e., to detoxify and destroy, a certain portion of its deadly chemicals. In 1971, it started shipping nerve-gas shells by rail to the East Coast, where they were hauled out into the Atlantic and dumped.

Almost as soon as that program became known, it had to be stopped. Neither Congress nor any other official body wanted to have the "ultrahazardous materials" traveling across the U.S., and their safety under water was not certain either. The Defense Department then announced that it would spend $50 million to remove or destroy the chemicals at the Rocky Mountain Arsenal. Until recently, everybody assumed that the problem had been solved. This false impression was strengthened last year when the Army provided the Environmental Protection Agency with an inventory of what it had in its stockpiles. The extent of the nerve-gas supplies, about which the EPA had not specifically asked, was not mentioned.

When Colorado Governor John Love was informed that the nerve-gas stockpile was still sitting ten miles from Denver, he was outraged. He telephoned newly appointed Defense Secretary James Schlesinger to express "doubt that the U.S. needs to maintain a nerve-gas stockpile as a deterrent, but that if it does, it certainly doesn't have to be maintained at an arsenal which adjoins a large metropolitan area."

The Pentagon now says that it plans to demilitarize the nerve gas starting in October. The process takes time (some will be detoxified in a special new facility at the arsenal), and therefore Denver airport cannot build its new runway before 1977. Meantime, Colorado Air Pollution Official Joe Palomba Jr. is investigating what other wonders the arsenal may have omitted from its inventory. Says he: "I do not want to be hit with any more surprises."

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