More than $20 million for military incinerators up in smoke

Every day, U.S. troops stationed at military bases accumulate waste: from Styrofoam packaging, to batteries and used equipment. Despite health warnings, U.S. bases in Afghanistan have been using open-air burn pits to dispose of all this litter.

By 2011, the Department of Defense (DOD) began using other methods, including installing incinerators at some of the military bases. In its latest report on U.S. government spending in Afghanistan, a government watchdog has found that the U.S. military spent over $80 million on incinerators, but at least $20 million of that money was wasted because four bases never used the machines.

The Special Inspector General of Afghanistan Reconstruction [SIGAR] reported Thursday that 23 incinerators were built at nine U.S. military bases across Afghanistan since 2011 at a cost of $81.9 million. 

The incinerators, along with landfill operations, were meant to replace the open-air burn pits, but because of inadequate planning, design and construction, four installations costing $20.1 million were never operational.

The DOD paid the contractors for all the incinerators in full.

One forward-operating base installed two incinerators that were meant to work 24 hours a day, SIGAR noted. But the base was in a “blackout” area, meaning it couldn't operate anything at night so as not to attract rocket fire. The designation limited the base’s ability to incinerate waste to 60 percent of its daily production.

"Further, given the estimated cost to operate and maintain the incinerators — $1 million annually — the base commander decided to continue using the open-air burn pits to dispose of the base's solid waste," SIGAR found.

In a December 2013 inspection of another installation, SIGAR found that two incinerators were so close together it was too narrow for forklifts to load waste, meaning it had to be done manually. Ramps leading to the ash were inaccessible for transportation equipment. The repairs would have cost about $1 million, so officials chose not to do so, and went back to using open-air burn pits.

In its response to SIGAR's report, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) disputed that some of the incinerators weren't working properly. "The incinerators were constructed in accordance with contract technical specifications with the exception of some open punch list items," which the USACE described as "minor deficiencies that should not have delayed transfer of the incinerators."

There is also the coming prospect of the U.S. military winding down its presence in Afghanistan, the U.S. military noted, another reason not to repair the faults.

"When it was announced that the bases for the incinerators would be closed as part of the drawdown of forces, all work efforts stopped on the incinerators," it said. It added that the decision to use burn pits over incinerators was not the USACE's responsibility, but understood the importance of not doing so whenever possible. 

"It is disturbing that SIGAR inspections showed that prohibited items such as tires and batteries continued to be disposed of in open-air burn pits even after Congress passed legislation to restrict that practice," SIGAR noted in its report, adding "U.S. military personnel and others were exposed to the emissions from open-air burn pits that could have lasting negative health consequences."

The Sigar report noted that in August 2010, CENTCOM said there were 251 active open-air burn pits in Afghanistan. The report went on to observe: "CENTCOM did not develop a regulation addressing the use of open-air burn pits until 2009 — about eight years after U.S. contingency operations began in Afghanistan."

The burn pits U.S. troops have used for over a decade to dispose of their waste have always been controversial. Five years ago a Government Accountability Office investigation found that burn pit operators hadn't been following correct procedures to ensure soldiers and Marines weren't exposed to harmful chemicals and emissions. 

SIGAR's findings are the latest in a long list of reported failures, misreporting and mismanagement regarding U.S. spending on reconstruction projects in Afghanistan. SIGAR has been cataloging a number of projects that may have squandered money, reporting on the inability of U.S. government agencies to find any successes in its programs designed to aid Afghan women. It also found that Afghan troops had an oversupply of weapons and trouble tracking their shipments.

SIGAR recently investigated a $3 million food-storage facility that was never used and a faltering $34 million initiative to develop a market for soybeans, which are not traditionally farmed or eaten by Afghans.

The sum for the U.S. war in Afghanistan now tops $100 billion, and will likely grow as the U.S. continues to foot the bill for the Afghan security forces and pours money into redevelopment projects.