Workers have begun destroying a massive stockpile of American chemical weapons stored at a former Army munitions depot near Colorado's ninth-largest city, blasting the artillery rounds open with explosives and neutralizing them with solvents.
Workers perform their slow, painstaking task under heavy security and strict safety precautions, which include constant monitoring for leaks, armed guards on random patrols and video monitoring by independent observers.
About 780,000 shells and mortar rounds filled with mustard agent are stored at the military-run Pueblo Chemical Depot, and all of them must be destroyed under a 1997 international law.
"You can't be too safe about what we're doing here," said Thomas Schultz, a spokesman for the Pueblo Chemical Agent Destruction Pilot Plant. "As long as things are dull, we're all happy."
