Chemical Weapons Working Group v. United States Department of the Army

Congress called for the United States Department of Defense to destroy stockpiles of lethal chemical weapons, such as nerve and blister agents, in 1985. Over 40 percent of these weapons were stored at a facility near Tooele, Utah. The United States Department of the Army (army) (defendant) conducted risk assessments. The army issued a general environmental-impact assessment in 1988 and a site-specific assessment in 1989. The army concluded that destruction of the weapons was less risky than continuing to store them and selected incineration as the best destruction method. Congress required that the incineration method be tested at Johnston Atoll. By 1993, the army completed testing. The entities responsible for testing concluded that the incineration method raised no fundamental safety or environmental concerns. The Utah Department of Environmental Quality (UDEQ) issued permits for the army’s Tooele incineration project under the Clean Air Act (CAA) and the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act. The army conducted two preliminary incineration tests at Tooele, and the UDEQ approved the results. The Chemical Weapons Working Group, Inc. (working group) (plaintiff) sued the army under the Clean Water Act (CWA). The working group argued that the incineration project would result in the discharge of chemical warfare agents into navigable waters, reaching the waters in the form of smokestack emissions drifting through the air. The district court dismissed the working group’s claims for failure to state a claim upon which relief can be granted. The working group appealed.