DENVER—Colorado’s health department ordered the U.S. Defense Department to expedite its destruction of mustard gas at a chemical weapons depot in Pueblo, saying the military had ignored earlier requests to do so.
Health department spokeswoman Jeannine Natterman said Wednesday’s order affecting the Pueblo Chemical Weapons Depot was mandatory. Some 2,600 tons of the gas are stored at Pueblo.
Last year, Congress directed that all mustard gas stored at Pueblo and seven other chemical weapons depots around the country be destroyed by 2017, rather than an initial target date of 2023.
The Defense Department has cited a shortage of funds in insisting on 2023.
“The reason Defense doesn’t have enough money to destroy the gas that remains at eight depots around the nation is that it is spending the money elsewhere,” said Natterman. “They absolutely must obey” the state order.
Kathy DeWeese, a Defense Department spokeswoman, said the order had not been received yet. “Legal staff will address the question of the legality once they get a copy,” she said.
DeWeese said the department is considering alternative ways to meet the 2017 goal and added that the department and the depot “share with all Colorado citizens the desire to have the Pueblo stockpile destroyed as safely and expeditiously as possible.”
The military has previously said other issues must be resolved to destroy the gas as safely as possible. Methods range from incineration to using bacteria that eat it to deployment of an enzyme that would render it safe.
Mustard gas was one of the first chemical weapons used on the battlefield. Germany initiated its use in World War I and called it “mustard gas” because it was contained in yellow shells.
Although its fatality rate was low, reports from the British and American military put it at between 2 percent to 4 percent. Its effects included blindness, blisters, ulceration of the skin and respiratory tract, blood poisoning and asphyxiation.
