Pine Bluff Completes Weapons Disposal

The U.S. Army has completed the destruction of the chemical weapons stockpile stored at the Pine Bluff Arsenal in Arkansas for nearly seven decades, officials announced last week. One-ton containers of mustard agent, as well as rockets and land mines filled with VX and GB nerve gas, were disposed of under terms of a 1997 international treaty that requires the safe destruction of all of the nation’s chemical weapons by April 2012. The arsenal once held 3,850 tons of chemical-weapon-related materials, 12% of the total U.S. stockpile. Disarmament operations at Pine Bluff began in March 2005. “Our world is a safer place, and our nation is one step closer to meeting its international commitment to dispose of its chemical weapons stockpile under the Chemical Weapons Convention,” says Carmen Spencer, the Army’s deputy assistant secretary for the elimination of chemical weapons. The arsenal will now begin closure operations. About 82% of the U.S. stockpile has been destroyed.