Chemical-Arms Dumps Dotting World's Oceans -- Hazards, Need For Monitoring Debated

In August 1970, two trains loaded with 12,508 U.S. Army nerve gas rockets lumbered across the Carolinas countryside. One train was code-named "Blue Shoe," the other "Green Dress." Their routes, secret.

As Blue Shoe and Green Dress rolled on, helicopters buzzed overhead scouting for terrorists. On board the trains were heavily armed troops, teams of doctors, ambulances and - cages full of rabbits.

"If the rabbits start twitching and die, we'll know that leaks have developed," said one Army officer.

The rockets contained 66 tons of a deadly colorless, odorless nerve gas called sarin - enough to kill more than 16 million people, according to Army estimates. Some 25 years later, Japanese terrorists would unleash sarin in a Tokyo subway station, killing a dozen people and sickening thousands.

By Aug. 14, Blue Shoe and Green Dress had arrived at the harbor of Sunny Point, N.C. The rockets - encased in a vault of concrete - were loaded onto the S.S. LeBaron Briggs, which was towed 300 miles out to sea and scuttled off the coast of Florida.

It was the last time the U.S. military ever buried chemical weapons at sea.

Today, the nerve gas rockets lie quietly in 16,440 feet of water.

At least, people THINK the rockets are still on the bottom. They THINK nothing much is going on.

The military sent down a probe in January 1974, but no one has checked on the weapons since.

Legacies of war

All around the globe, more than 100 chemical-weapons dumps lie submerged in seawater. Most locations are known, others can only be guessed.

Some are small; some are large - such as two caches with more than 51,000 Army nerve gas rockets lying about a mile deep and 150 miles southeast of New York City.

The sea dumps are legacies of this century's wars - World War I, World War II and the Cold War.

From the 1940s to 1970, Great Britain, France, the Soviet Union and the United States disposed of chemical weapons by dropping them into the world's oceans.

The United States alone is responsible for at least 60 underwater chemical dumps containing more than 100,000 tons of toxic materials, in every ocean except the Arctic, says a 1993 U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency study obtained by Knight-Ridder. Thousands of World War II records have been destroyed, so there may be even more sites.

According to the study, the U.S. sites are in the Gulf of Mexico; off the Atlantic coasts of Florida, South Carolina and New Jersey, and near France, Italy, Norway, Denmark, Japan, Australia and India.

To monitor or not to monitor

In general, scientists recommend leaving underwater sites alone, especially if they are in deep water.

"Those (dumps) at 16,000 feet are much less dangerous than those at 500 feet," says Joseph Bunnett, professor emeritus at University of California at Santa Cruz, chairman of an international group of scientists studying how best to deal with discarded chemical weapons.

Some scientists say they'd like to see regular monitoring. Environmental activists agree. Fishermen burned

Some countries have examined underwater chemical dumps near their coastlines.

The intergovernmental Helsinki Commission recently examined an estimated 13,000 tons of chemical weapons dumped into the Baltic Sea by the Soviet Union and Germany following World War II.

Because the Baltic is relatively shallow - with a mean depth of about 170 feet - fishermen who drag their nets across the dumps occasionally pull up old war chemicals. From 1985 to 1992, Baltic Sea fisherman brought up more than 17 tons of old World War II chemical munitions.

Off the east coast of Florida, where the S.S. LeBaron Briggs and its 12,508 nerve gas rockets lie three miles down, nothing has surfaced.

Mutant sealife?

The underwater photo probe sent down in 1974 found no sign of leaking - and plenty of sealife.

If the nerve gas ever leaks into the ocean, the Army says seawater will break it down and effectively decontaminate virtually all of it within hours.

But according to scientist Bunnett, the new chemicals generated by the interaction of nerve gas with seawater could cause cancer or mutations in nearby sea animals, including tiny sea life at the beginning of the world food chain. The Army had no comment on possible alterations to sea life.

Accidental sinking

The first time chemical weapons were dropped into the ocean, it was an accident. In 1943, the German Air Force bombed a U.S. ship at Bari harbor on Italy's eastern coast. The S.S. John Harvey sank with its cargo of 2,000 mustard gas bombs. Some bombs exploded, killing dozens and perhaps hundreds (estimates vary) of military and Italian civilians.

Because of war censorship, the John Harvey's chemical cargo was kept secret for years.

After the war, most of the unused Allied and Nazi chemical weapons were buried at sea. Some of the biggest dumpings were:

-- Operation Davy Jones Locker. In 1946-48, the United States and its allies dumped more than 31,000 tons - 11 ships full of chemicals - in a North Sea strait between Norway and Denmark.

-- Operation Geranium. In 1948, the U.S. military sunk a ship full of Lewisite gas 300 miles off the coast of Florida.

-- In 1958, the United States scuttled a ship containing 301,000 mustard gas bombs 117 miles off the coast of San Francisco.

`Sink 'Em'

During the 1950s, the United States began its own nerve-gas program. It began to manufacture the first of what would be nearly 400,000 M-55 rockets that each could deliver a 10.8-pound payload of sarin nerve gas.

In 1966, the Army discovered some of the rockets were leaking. To dispose of those and others that might be prone to leak, the Army decided to bury them at sea. The operation was code named CHASE - for "Cut Holes (in the ships) And Sink 'Em."

In two CHASE dumps, one in 1967 and another in 1968, 51,180 defective nerve gas rockets were dropped 150 miles off the coast of New York City in depths from 6,390 feet to 7,200 feet.

The last CHASE operation was the 1970 scuttling of the LeBaron Briggs off Florida.

By then, public controversy had erupted over sea burials. Congress opened hearings on the dumps in 1969. That same year, a National Academy of Sciences committee recommended that the Army destroy obsolete chemical weapons where they were built.

The Army said that the 1970 sea burial was essential because it had no way to quickly and safely dispose of 12,508 nerve gas rockets that might leak. Congress agreed to allow one last dump.

A quarter-century later, environmentalist are worried that the undersea dumps may be forgotten.