The Morning Call
http://www.mcall.com/news
Sunday 30 October 2005
Millions of pounds of unused weapons of mass
destruction were dumped in oceans before Congress banned the practice
in 1972. The threat is still out there, and may be growing.
First of a Two-Day Series
A clam dredging operation off the coast of
Atlantic City, N.J., in 2004 pulled up an old artillery shell.
The long-submerged, World War I-era explosive was filled with a black, tar-like substance.
Bomb disposal technicians from Dover Air
Force Base in Delaware were brought in to dismantle it. Three of them
were injured, one hospitalized with large, pus-filled blisters on his
arm and hand.
The shell was filled with mustard gas in solid form.
What was long-feared by the few military
officials in the know had come to pass: Chemical weapons that the Army
dumped at sea decades ago had finally ended up on shore in the United
States.
While it has long been known that some
chemical weapons went into the ocean, records obtained by the Daily
Press of Newport News, Va., show that the previously classified
weapons-dumping program was far more extensive than has ever been
suspected.
The Army now admits in reports never before
released that it secretly dumped 64 million pounds of nerve and mustard
gas agent into the sea, along with 400,000 chemical-filled bombs, land
mines and rockets and more than 500 tons of radioactive waste either
tossed overboard or packed into the holds of scuttled vessels.
A Daily Press investigation also found:
These weapons of mass destruction virtually
ring the country, concealed off the coasts of at least 11 states: six
on the East Coast, including New Jersey and Maryland, two on the Gulf
Coast, and in California, Hawaii and Alaska. Few, if any, state
officials have been informed of their existence.
The chemical agents could pose a hazard for
generations. The Army has examined only a few of its 26 dump zones, and
none in 30 years.
The Army can't say exactly where all the
weapons were dumped from World War II to 1970. Army records are
sketchy, missing or were destroyed.
More dump sites probably exist. The Army
hasn't reviewed records from the World War I era, when ocean dumping of
chemical weapons was common.
"We do not claim to know where they all
are," said William Brankowitz, a deputy project manager in the U.S.
Army Chemical Materials Agency and a leading authority on the Army's
chemical weapons dumping. "We don't want to be cavalier at all and say
this stuff was exposed to water and is OK. It can last for a very, very
long time."
A drop of nerve agent can kill within a
minute. When released in the ocean it lasts up to six weeks, killing
every organism it touches before breaking down into its nonlethal
chemical components.
Mustard gas can be fatal. When exposed to
seawater it forms a concentrated, encrusted gel that lasts for at least
five years, rolling around on the ocean floor, killing or contaminating
sea life.
Sea-dumped chemical weapons may be slowly
leaking from decades of saltwater corrosion, resulting in a
time-delayed release of deadly chemicals over the next 100 years and an
unforeseeable environmental impact. Steel corrodes at different rates
depending on the water depth, ocean temperature and thickness of the
shells.
That was the conclusion of Norwegian
scientists who in 2002 examined chemical weapons dumped off Norway's
coast after World War II by the U.S. and British military.
Overseas, more than 200 fishermen over the
years have been burned by mustard gas pulled on deck. A fisherman in
Hawaii was burned in 1976 when he brought up an Army-dumped mortar
round full of mustard gas.
Although it seems unlikely the weapons will
begin to wash up on shore, last year's discovery that a mustard
gas-filled artillery shell was dumped off the coast of New Jersey was
ominous for several reasons.
It was the first ocean-dumped chemical weapon to make its way to shore in the United States.
It was pulled up with clams in relatively
shallow water only 20 miles off the coast of Atlantic City. The Army
had no idea chemical weapons were dumped in the area.
Most alarming: It was found intact in a residential driveway in Delaware.
It had survived being dredged up and put
through a crusher to create cheap clamshell driveway fill sold
throughout the Delmarva Peninsula in Delaware and Maryland.
Decades of Dumping
The United States never used chemical
weapons in war but amassed a huge stockpile to be unleashed if enemy
forces used them first. Their existence was a known, ultimately
successful, deterrent.
The Army's secret ocean-dumping program spanned at least three decades, from 1944 to 1970.
The dumped weapons were deemed to be
unneeded surplus. They were hazardous to transport, expensive to store,
too dangerous to bury and difficult to destroy.
In the early 1970s, the Army publicly
admitted it had dumped some chemical weapons off the U.S. coast.
Congress banned the practice in 1972. Three years later, the United
States signed an international treaty prohibiting ocean disposal of
chemical weapons.
Only now have Army reports come to light
that show how much was dumped, what kind of chemical weapons they were,
when they were thrown overboard, and rough nautical coordinates of
where some are located.
The reports contain bits and pieces of
information on the Army's long-running ocean dumping program. The
reports were released to the Daily Press, which cross-indexed them to
obtain the most comprehensive, detailed picture yet compiled of what
was dumped, where and when.
To put the information in context, the
newspaper also examined nautical charts, National Archive records and
scientific studies and interviewed many experts on unexploded ordnance
and chemical warfare, both in the country and overseas.
The Army's Brankowitz created the seminal
report on ocean dumping. He examined classified Army records and in
1987 wrote a lengthy report on chemical weapons movements over the
decades. It included the revelation that more than a dozen shipments
ended in the ocean. The report was not widely disseminated.
His follow-up report in 1989 revealed,
through review of other previously classified documents, the rough
nautical coordinates of some dump sites and the existence of more dump
zones. In 2001, a computer database was created to include additional
dump zones the Army discovered and more details of some of the dumping
operations.
The database summary and the 1989 report had never before been released publicly.
"I know I didn't find everything," said
Brankowitz, who has worked for more than 30 years on chemical weapons
issues for the Army. "I'm very much convinced there are records at the
National Archives that have been misfiled. Short of a major research
effort that would cost a lot of money, we've done the best we can."
The reports reveal that the Army created at
least 26 chemical weapons dump sites off the coastlines of at least 11
states, but knows the rough nautical coordinates of only half the sites.
At least 64 million pounds of liquid mustard
gas and nerve agent in one-ton steel canisters were dumped into the
sea, along with at least 400,000 chemical-filled bombs, grenades, land
mines and rockets as well as radioactive waste, according to the
reports.
The Army's documents are incomplete or
vague. Years of records are missing or were destroyed to clear office
space at the Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland, a longtime chemical
weapon research and testing base.
And the Army has not reviewed its records of
chemical weapons dumping before World War II, when it was common to
just throw the weapons into the ocean in relatively shallow water,
Brankowitz said.
As a result, more dump sites probably exist, he conceded.
Possible Environmental Disaster
The environmental impact of chemical weapons dump sites is unknown, but potentially disastrous.
The ocean depth varies widely off the East
Coast, as a rule gradually deepening to 600 feet before hitting the
outer continental shelf, which drops off into very deep water. The
shelf's location can be as close as 60 miles or as far as 200 miles
from shore.
"The perception at the time was the ocean is
vast, it would absorb it," said Craig Williams, director of the
Chemical Weapons Working Group in Kentucky, a grass-roots citizen
group. "Certainly, it is insane in retrospect they would do it."
"It would be inevitable, I assume, all of
this will be released into the ocean at some point or another," said
Williams, who has fought Army plans to incinerate some of the 44
million pounds of chemical weapons the country now has stockpiled. "I
don't think anyone knows for sure the true danger. It's just a matter
of opinion. You can say, 'It's going to kill everyone,' or you can say,
'It's not a problem.' The truth is somewhere in between."
Based on the information available, the Army
presumes most of the weapons are in very deep water and are unlikely to
jeopardize divers or commercial fishing operations that dredge the
ocean bottom.
John Chatterton doesn't believe that.
"I don't think it all is where they say it
is," said Chatterton, a 25-year veteran diver who searches for
undiscovered shipwrecks as host of the History Channel's "Deep Sea
Detectives." "I've found a lot of stuff where it's not supposed to be.
Absolutely, positively, it is not a guarantee it is there [in deep
water]."
Chemical weapons were dumped long before
electronic navigation systems were invented. Their nautical locations
are based on the word of ship captains, who surely wanted to ditch
their cargo quickly and, Chatterton suspects, probably cut corners.
"The guys who were doing this were scared of
this stuff. They were well-motivated to get rid of this stuff as fast
as they could," Chatterton said. "So they could take it all the way out
there or else they could say, 'This is good enough,' and be back in
port in three hours. I know what they did. It's mariner nature."
State officials in the dark
One of the first of the now-identified dump
zones created at the end of World War II was also one of the largest.
The Army dubbed it Disposal Site Baker.
The Army has only the vaguest idea where it
is on the ocean floor somewhere off Charleston, S.C., according to the
most specific of surviving records.
"I have never had any information to suggest
this was done," said Charles Farmer, a marine biologist who has worked
for South Carolina's Department of Natural Resources for almost 40
years. "I would say this is not well-known to us at all. This is
something that is new, at least to me. It's incredible some of the
things we've managed to do."
The first documented dump off that state
took place in March 1946 when four railroad cars full of mustard gas
bombs and mines were tossed over the side of the USS Diamond Head, an
ammunition ship.
Several months later, an estimated 23 barges
full of German-produced nerve gas bombs and U.S.-made Lewisite bombs
were dumped in the same location. Lewisite is a blister agent
chemically akin to mustard agent. A single barge carried up to 350 tons.
"If we don't have any idea of depths of
water or location, hell, they could be anywhere," Farmer said. "As we
have more and more activity and more and more development off the
coast, I hope this was buried in 6,000 feet of water or a lot of this
stuff is going to come back to haunt us."
There is one indication those weapons were
dumped in relatively shallow water: Army records show that many of
those 23 slow-moving barges were unloaded in one-day, out-and-back
operations.
The records leave no doubt that other chemical weapons were dumped close to shore:
In 1944, at least 16,000 mustard-filled
100-pound bombs were unloaded off the coast of Hawaii in deep water
only five miles from shore.
Several mustard gas bombs fell into the
Mississippi River near Braithwaite, La., in 1945 and have never been
found.
A reported 124 leaking German mustard gas
bombs were tossed in the Gulf of Mexico off Horn Island in Mississippi
in 1946 from a barge that returned to port a few hours later. The
island is part of Gulf Islands National Seashore, a popular vacation
and fishing destination.
A 1947 dump site in the Aleutian Islands, part of Alaska, is only 12 miles from a harbor.
Dump Sites Moved North
By the 1950s, the Army shifted much of its
chemical dump operations north to the Virginia-Maryland border and into
deeper water.
In 1957 the Army dumped 48 tons of Lewisite off the coast of Virginia Beach in 12,600 feet of water.
Three more dump zones were created more than
100 miles off the coastline between Chincoteague, Va., and Assateague,
Md., tourist spots known for their unsullied beaches and populations of
wild horses.
Dumped there in roughly 2,000 feet of water
were at least 77,000 mustard-filled mortar shells, 5,000 white
phosphorous munitions, 1,500 one-ton canisters of Lewisite and 800
55-gallon barrels of military radioactive waste.
It could not be determined what kind of
radioactive waste was dumped. But there is one indication it could be
highly dangerous nuclear waste with a half-life of thousands of years.
National Archive records of the Army's
secretive chemical weapons escort unit, reviewed by the Daily Press,
show numerous shipments in the 1950s between a laboratory in Oak Ridge,
Tenn., other Army bases with chemical weapons slated for sea disposal,
and the Yuma Testing Station in Arizona.
Oak Ridge was where thermonuclear weapons
were being developed at the time. Yuma was a military test ground for
weapons in development. Records show a shipment on March 7, 1953, was
of 35,000 pounds of unidentified "classified materials." The Army
apparently stopped dumping radioactive waste in the late 1960s, the
records show, when chemical weapons disposal operations again headed
north in the Atlantic.
Dumping off Jersey Coast
Two ships full of the most potent of all
nerve gases, known as VX, were scuttled in 6,000 feet of water many
miles off Atlantic City as part of Operation CHASE.
CHASE was Pentagon shorthand for Cut Holes And Sink 'Em.
The nerve gas was in rockets that were encased in concrete before the ships were scuttled.
The Army desperately wanted to get rid of
these particular weapons. They also contained jet fuel to propel the
rockets. The fuel had a tendency to "auto-ignite," or spontaneously
explode.
The ships - the SS Corporal Eric G. Gibson
and SS Mormactern - remain a potential danger. Although the rockets
were encased in concrete, scientists don't know how quickly concrete
breaks down from water pressure at such depths.
A third ship that was scuttled nearby is no
longer a hazard: It blew up on its way to the ocean floor on Aug. 7,
1968.
That ship, the SS Richardson, was filled
with conventional, high-explosive weapons and 3,500 one-ton containers
of mustard agent mixed with water. It was on its way to the bottom in
7,800 feet of water when a chain-reaction explosion went off,
presumably caused by water pressure on one of the weapons that set off
the rest.
"This is really quite disturbing," said U.S.
Rep. Robert Andrews, D-N.J., who has been fighting Army plans to dump
chemically neutralized nerve gas in the Delaware River. "I did not know
of any of this. It's a very serious problem that state officials
haven't been told."
Not on Any Maps
Boaters, divers, fishermen and commercial seafood trawlers have no way to steer clear of the dump sites.
That's because the Army has put only one of
its 26 known chemical weapons dumps on nautical charts, according to
records kept by the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric
Administration.
The federal agency in charge of undersea
cable-laying operations, as well as gas and oil ventures, has only a
vague idea of where chemical weapons were thrown into the ocean, said
spokesman Gary Strasburg.
That agency, Minerals Management Service,
knows only what the Army has revealed to the agency: that chemical
weapons were dumped at sea and that some are somewhere in the Gulf of
Mexico and at a location somewhere off the coast of South Carolina,
agency records show.
The impact of dumping operations has never
been studied. Few scientists knew it was done, so studies of the
decline in sea life over the years has never focused on the possibility
of leaking chemical weapons.
Commercial fishing operations, as well as
scallop and clam trawlers, have been forced to go farther and farther
from shore over the last 25 years because sea life has thinned for
unknown reasons. Some scallopers now dredge in up to 400 feet of water,
which is more than 100 miles from the shore in some East Coast
locations.
The bottom-dwelling cod population in the Northern Atlantic has been decimated.
Another Cause of Deaths?
Hundreds of bottlenose dolphins mysteriously
washed up on Virginia and New Jersey shores in 1987. They died with
massive, never-explained skin blisters that resembled mustard gas burns
on humans.
Federal marine scientists ultimately
attributed the unprecedented number of dolphin deaths to a combination
of morbillivirus related to distemper in dogs and potent vibrio
bacteria from industrial pollutants.
That combination has killed other marine
mammals over the years. But none of them has ever been found with their
skin partially peeling off.
One marine mammal specialist who suspects
leaking chemical weapons killed the dolphins met with Army officials
and was told dumping had been done but was assured the weapons were
unloaded in water too deep to harm the coastal-living creatures.
"You'd see the photos and you'd say, 'Man,
this animal was burned by something,"' said Bob Schoelkopf, director of
the Marine Mammal Stranding Center in Brigantine, N.J. He said "it is a
very good possibility" leaking chemical weapons killed the dolphins.
"It'd be nice to see the Army go down there
and investigate, but nobody wants to open that book, it seems,"
Schoelkopf said. "You'd think they'd want to go look at those sites and
say once and for all this isn't a problem. The amazing thing is they
are not being monitored."
The Army also wondered if its chemical
weapons were responsible for the dolphin deaths and was preparing to
investigate some dump zones. The project was scrapped when the deaths
were attributed to the virus and bacteria, said the Army's Brankowitz.
Little or No Monitoring
Over the decades, the Army has conducted
environmental tests on only four of its dump sites, and none since 1975.
Some of the last tests the Army conducted
were on the nerve gas-filled ships off the coast of New Jersey, and
they found no evidence the weapons had leaked, Brankowitz said.
He said that leads the Army to presume the
pressure on the weapons as they sank to the bottom crushed the shells
and squirted their deadly contents onto the seabed, where they long ago
broke down into their non-lethal chemical components.
That may be wishful thinking, according to some scientists.
Shells filled with chemical weapons are more
likely to slowly leak over time than to be crushed while sinking, said
Peter Brewer, a marine scientist at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research
Institute in California.
Regardless, he said, he considers the dangers of leaking chemical weapons in deep-water sites to be low.
He noted that the only Army chemical weapons
dump site on nautical charts - the wreck of the SS William Ralston,
which was scuttled 117 miles off the coast of San Francisco in the
1950s - has not been found to be leaking, although he said scientists
have monitored it only "from a distance."
Not far from that wreck, scientists have
determined that drums of radioactive waste dumped by industry in the
1950s have so corroded they now are paper-thin with holes in some of
them, said Richard Charter, a California environmentalist with
Environmental Defense.
He said he fears recent congressional
approval of offshore gas and oil exploration off the East and West
coasts permitted through last year's lifting of a 22-year-old
moratorium could release the chemical agents from their containers.
"It certainly is within the realm of possibility," he said. "This is an invasive activity."
Seismic exploration is conducted by setting
off massive air guns on the ocean surface and measuring the blasts when
they bounce off the ocean floor. Such exploration, and drilling
operations, have been conducted for decades in the Gulf of Mexico
without releasing chemical warfare agents dumped by the Army in that
body of water.
Leaking Shells
Overseas, scientists who monitor chemical
weapons dump sites off the coasts of other countries have identified an
unmistakable problem in the Skagerrak Straits, a narrow but deep body
of water that separates Norway and Denmark.
In 2002, Norwegian scientists sent a
deep-diving, remote-operated vehicle to investigate four ships full of
captured German chemical weapons. The U.S. and British military
scuttled them after World War II in roughly 2,000 feet of water.
The Norwegians discovered the sunken ships
remain intact. Some of the shells had leaked. Others were slowly
corroding. That revealed a problem that could last hundreds of years,
the scientists concluded.
Soil sediment showed high levels of arsenic,
a component of some of the chemical weapons. Arsenic is
bioaccumulative. This means bottom-feeding shellfish are likely to be
contaminated and pass arsenic up the food chain to accumulate in humans
who eat them, the scientists discovered.
Also worrisome: Nets from fishing trawlers were found tangled on some of the weapons-filled wrecks.
"It might be possible to get chemical
ammunition in the nets, which could then be brought up to the surface
and poison fishermen," the scientists wrote in a report on the
expedition. "It is also a possibility that fishing equipment could
damage the wrecks and expose the chemical ammunition to the water,
increasing the release of the agents to the environment."
While the Army may not have known better at
the time, it is obligated to at least assess the danger the dump sites
pose today, said Lenny Siegel, executive director of the Center for
Public Environmental Oversight, who has specialized in chemical weapons
issues.
"If no one does a study looking for
three-legged fish, how do they know it's not a problem?" he asked. "My
guess is the risks are remote in most cases, but I think you have to at
least evaluate the risk. They have to take continuing responsibility.
"They need to see if there is an impact on
the food chain. If there is, you have to warn people. If so, they have
to do something with them."
MONDAY: After World War II, the Army
secretly dumped its overseas chemical weapons stockpiles off the shores
of more than a dozen other countries. One scientist calls them a
"disaster looming."
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John Bull is a reporter for the Daily Press of Newport News, Va., a Tribune Publishing newspaper.
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