Army searches for chemical weapons dumped in ocean from WWI to 1970

[Thom Little]

The military is plowing through old records to find any and all information on the Army's ocean dumping of chemical weapons decades ago. It is a high-priority effort to determine where the chemical weapons are and what danger they pose today.

.......

The records search was prompted by a Daily Press investigation published in October based on never-before-released Army reports covering 1944 to 1970 that revealed the military dumped at least 64 million pounds of chemical weapons into the ocean in dozens of locations that virtually ring the country.

The dumpsites -- mostly containing mustard and nerve gases and some radioactive waste -- are off the coasts of at least 11 states. Additional dumpsites are off the coasts of 16 other countries, where overseas stockpiles were dumped at the close of World War II.

The Army knows where only half the dump sites off the U.S. coast are, because the known surviving records are vague and others have been destroyed. Some scientific evidence suggests the weapons may be slowly leaking after decades of saltwater corrosion.


http://www.kentucky.com/mld/kentucky/news/13380757.htm

[acmavm]

1. Lovely. But what can one expect? Long term planning has not been a

major achievement of the military when it comes to things like this. Stash it, get it out of sight for now, and deal with it later when they have to because the news of how much they dumped and possibly where get out. Because believe me, if it hadn't they'd still be ignoring the potential (no doubt probable) poisoning of the coastal waters.

This is sort of like the nuclear waste issue. Yucca Flats is not a solution, but I'll be damned if I know what is.