A minor leak caused delays Tuesday during the first day of chemical weapons incineration at the Pine Bluff Arsenal, but crews were still able to destroy two M55 rockets packed with nerve agent as planned.

Start-up was delayed after someone noticed a pinhole leak in a pipe that carries caustic liquid used to help neutralize the acid gas that is a byproduct of incineration, said Bob Love, acting project manager at the Pine Bluff Chemical Agent Disposal Facility.

The 9:30 a.m. start was pushed back to 11 a.m. to give workers time to make sure all systems were working properly.

"It's not unexpected for us to have to repair things," Love said. "Would we have liked for everything to go perfectly? Sure."

Love is the project manager at a chemical weapons incinerator in Anniston, Ala., but he will work at the Pine Bluff incinerator until a new project manager is found. Love was called in abruptly two weeks ago after Stephen DePew, Pine Bluff's former project manager, left his job. Arsenal officials said Tuesday that they couldn't comment on DePew's departure.

By 4:15 p.m., the first two M55 rockets from the Pine Bluff Arsenal's stockpile had been drained of their nerve agent liquid, chopped up and dropped into furnaces to be burned. The GB nerve agent was burned in an incinerator specially designed to handle liquids, while the rocket pieces were burned in a metal-parts furnace.

"This represents a major milestone in our progress to dispose of the nation's chemical weapons stockpile," said Dale Ormond, manager of the Army's Chemical Demilitarization Program.

The leak that gummed up operations temporarily wasn't a cause for concern, he said. Ormond was the project manager at the Tooele Chemical Agent Disposal Facility in Utah for more than two years and said glitches in the ramp-up phase are common. Eventually all the kinks will be worked out and operations will run smoothly, he said.

"What you'll find is things will become very boring around here," he said.

The startup of agent incineration made no waves outside the arsenal gates as people living nearby went to work and school as usual Tuesday. Two dozen students at White Hall High School, which sits within two miles of the arsenal's main gate, were running laps on the school's outdoor track Tuesday afternoon.

Air quality monitors at the incinerator showed no problems, said Derick Warrick, engineering supervisor for the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality.

"We had inspectors on the site to monitor the chop and drop," Warrick said. "Everything went smooth."

The air, soil and water on and near the Pine Bluff Arsenal won't suffer from the chemical weapons incineration process, said Col. Joseph Pecoraro, who works in the Army's chemical weapons elimination office.

"We intend to leave the land as good or better than when we arrived, just like the Boy Scouts," he said.

The Pine Bluff Arsenal is one of eight chemical stockpile sites in the United States. Chemical weapons are being destroyed in Anniston; Tooele; Umatilla, Ore.; and Edgewood, Md. Destruction at a stockpile site in Newport, Ind., is to begin later this year.

No timelines or destruction plans have been set for stockpiles in Pueblo, Colo., and Richmond, Ky., although an international treaty calls for destruction of all chemical weapons by 2012.

The Army is studying the possibility of moving weapons from these sites to sites where incinerators have already been built, an option that previously was ruled out because of the potential dangers of traffic accidents or terrorist attacks during transport. Results of the study are expected in April.

The Pine Bluff Arsenal is home to 12 percent of the nation's chemical weapons stockpile. The cache includes 3,850 tons of chemical agent distributed among rockets, land mines and bulk containers. Many of the arsenal's aging munitions have been stored in dirt-covered cement igloos for more than 60 years.

Army spokesmen say the potential for leaks increases as the years pass, so destroying the weapons is the safest option.

Tuesday's startup at the Pine Bluff Arsenal came after nearly a year of delays and more than 11 million man hours of construction and testing. The Army originally planned to begin burning the arsenal's chemical weapons on April 30, 2004, but equipment problems held them up.

Workers at the incinerator will start slowly but eventually will feed up to 30 or more rockets into the furnace system each hour, Love said.