In April 1998 a rail car full of napalm, which had been stored at the Fallbrook Naval Weapons Station near Camp Pendleton since the Vietnam War, was left in limbo after a firm in East Chicago, Ind. — citing public and political pressure— reneged on its agreement to take the load.
The shipment made it by rail from San Diego to Kansas City, Kan., before it was ordered back to California. Three years later, the Pentagon announced it had finally destroyed the last of the U.S. stockpile of napalm.
From the San Diego Union-Tribune, Thursday, April 16, 1998:
Hot potato on siding in Kansas
But the shipment could head back to California
By Susan Gembrowski, Staff Writer
The train carrying 12,000 gallons of surplus Vietnam War-era napalm from Fallbrook to nowhere had a home, albeit temporarily, in Kansas City, Kan., last night.
And soon it may be headed back to Southern California.
The flatbed rail car carrying two 6,000-gallon tanker containers of liquid napalm was diverted to a Burlington Northern Santa Fe rail yard yesterday, where it was expected to remain until at least today.
Burlington Northern railroad officials have agreed to allow the napalm to stay at its yard for 48 hours, where “it will be treated like any other shipment,” said Jerry Jenkins, a railroad spokesman.
A source close to the project, who asked not to be identified, said the Navy is exploring the option of temporarily storing the napalm at China Lake Naval Weapons Center, 150 miles north of Los Angeles.
The Navy and its prime napalm disposal contractor, Battelle Memorial Institute, plan to identify a temporary storage site for the controversial shipment by midday today, said Greg Koller, a Battelle spokesman in Richland, Wash.
Both the Navy and Battelle are searching for a spot to put the napalm, a form of jellied gasoline. The tankers left the Fallbrook Naval Weapons Facility on Saturday, bound for Pollution Control Industries in East Chicago, Ind. But the company backed out of its contract Monday, citing political and governmental pressure, and leaving the napalm with no place to go.
“The Navy is checking military sites. We’re checking commercial sites,” Koller said. “I don’t have a list of those possibilities. This is a temporary fix, until we can get on with the greater project.”
Battelle and the Navy had little time to decide what to do with the shipment after PCI balked. The napalm was scheduled to arrive in Indiana over the weekend, or Monday at the latest, said the Burlington Northern spokesman.
PCI President Robert Campbell said that if the load of napalm arrived, “We would just reject it, just turn around and send it back.”
Koller declined to comment on which companies Battelle was reviewing to take over the disposal work. But he said that once a temporary storage site has been identified, the next step is finding a place to recycle the napalm.
Besides PCI, three other companies — two in Texas and one in Missouri — also qualified in the original bid process, Koller said. PCI was chosen because of cost and technical expertise.
Four other companies — in Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin and a second in Missouri — also submitted proposals to the original bid request, he said.
“We couldn’t just roll over to the second choice since the bids are no longer valid,” Koller said. “The three other finalists may no longer be interested, and the numbers they provided may no longer be competitive.”
Even so, the decision to stop the train from heading toward East Chicago, Ind., does not absolve PCI of its contractual obligations, Koller said.
“We still think this is a valid contract, and that they did not have the right to back out on it. We worked with environmental, health, every regulatory agency we needed to on this, and we still feel this was an appropriate disposal and a good contract with PCI.”
Asked if Battelle would sue, Koller said: “Legal action is one possibility that has been raised.”
The process of removing 23 million pounds of napalm, in more than 34,000 canisters that have been stored in a field at the Fallbrook Naval Weapons Facility for more than 20 years, has become a political football.
California legislators were pitted against those in Illinois, who said they did not want the napalm traveling through their state.
Reps. Ron Packard, R-Carlsbad, and Randy “Duke” Cunningham, R-Escondido, contended that of the Illinois congressional delegation were using the napalm issue as a political platform for re-election. Congressmen from Illinois have hotly denied that charge, and cited safety concerns at the Indiana disposal firm.
Packard has sent a letter to a federal watchdog agency, the General ing Office, requesting an investigation into whether PCI was forced to renege on the contract because of political pressure.
PCI was under scrutiny from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which found unrelated hazardous waste stored at the company’s plant in violation of federal Superfund laws. Campbell had reported the violations in October, but didn’t receive a warning letter from the environmental agency until mid-March.
The company president said he was caught in the middle of the political turmoil.
“The political pressure was elevating and elevating,” Campbell said yesterday. “The congressmen in our particular area certainly have been fairly vocal about this. It’s an election year. It just got bigger than we are.”
He also said his company was not involved in any of the high-level meetings to resolve the napalm issue.
“Most of the parties were content to let us be the pawn in this, to let us take the heat,” he said.
