Efforts to destroy the stockpile of deadly chemical weapons and nerve agents at the Pine Bluff Arsenal are on track, and officials said changes to the incineration process have been made over the course of the nine months of the project to limit flare-ups and better inform the public about such incidents.

Since the incineration of the weapons began March 29, 30,000 M55 rockets filled with GB nerve agent have been destroyed and almost 300,000 pounds of GB have been incinerated, according to the most recent tallies from the arsenal.

For decades the weapons had been stored in underground igloos at the base.

The Pine Bluff Arsenal is one of eight sites across the country where the nation stores its chemical weapons. The United States is working to destroy its national stockpile by 2012 to comply with an international treaty.

Raini Wright, a spokesman for the chemical-disposal facility at the arsenal, said that the incineration at the Pine Bluff Arsenal is expected to finish in 2010, and closing and dismantling the facility will take two more years.

So far, 13 igloos once filled with rockets have been emptied.

The rockets are first drained of the GB nerve agent, sheared into eight pieces and eliminated in two furnace systems. The drained nerve agent is incinerated in a liquid incinerator and the sheared rocket pieces are incinerated in a deactivation furnace.

While officials at the arsenal were familiar with such incineration and expected mishaps along the way, they quickly learned that many in the public knew little about the process. However, officials have taken steps to alert the public about any occurrences.

Early in the process, a small flare-up on May 11 wasn’t reported for a week. That delay caused some in the public to become upset.

“We never intended not to report it. To us it was routine,” Wright said.

But since the May fire, the arsenal has issued news releases and made phone calls to elected officials and regulators shortly after subsequent occurrences. The change took place “in response to the public concern,” Wright said.

Since incineration began, six fires have occurred at the incineration facility, the most recent occurring Nov. 29.  Three occurred during the incineration and the others resulted from residues of chemical agents in drain pans. All were quickly contained and never resulted in injuries or the release of chemical agents.

The arsenal constantly reviews its procedures, Wright said.

Changes have been made throughout the process to limit the possibility of flare-ups during and after what’s called the shearing process.

For instance, the sprays used to keep the rockets cool when they are cut into pieces now come on more often and stay on longer. And maintenance crews now clean the area more often to keep residue from igniting.

The facility was designed to handle such incidents, Wright said. All the fires occurred in an explosive containment room that has 2-feetthick walls of steel and reinforced concrete.

“They’re [the rockets] designed to ignite or explode; we definitely expect more of these,” Wright said of the fires. “These munitions are over 60 years old. They are aging. They were never designed to be stored that long.”

At the onset of the project, the arsenal was home to 3,850 tons of chemical agent — 12 percent of the nation’s chemical-weapon stockpile. Although the arsenal has had a long presence in central Arkansas, many people living around it are unprepared for a possible leak or other disaster at the arsenal, said Wayne Norton, a spokesman for the Jefferson County Office of Emergency Management. About 54,000 of the 83,000 people who live in Jefferson County reside in Pine Bluff, according to Census figures.

An advertising campaign funded by the Army’s Chemical Stockpile Emergency Preparedness Program has aimed to change the lack of preparedness. The campaign has tried to educate the public about what to do in an emergency, said Norton, who works with the preparedness program.

That’s a tall order, considering 80 percent of the people a crew met over the course of a day of interviews couldn’t answer basic questions on how to shelter at their homes, what evacuation routes were in place or what CSEPP, Chemical Stockpile Emergency Preparedness Program, stood for. The campaign is in the middle of its second year.

“Most people didn’t know the answers to simple questions,” Norton said. “A number of people have lived there for awhile. They’re victims of their own good fortune.”

The Pine Bluff Arsenal opened in 1941 to manufacture the chemical agents mustard and lewisite and to assemble munitions. Production of chemical weapons ended in 1969. Since the 1970s, the arsenal has produced nonlethal chemical agents, tested chemical defense equipment and manufactured such munitions as white phosphorus.

Today the arsenal is working to destroy weapons not considered part of the stockpile.

This week arsenal employees will begin operating a binary destruction facility to destroy chemicals designed to mix in flight to form deadly nerve agents.

The project is the arsenal’s third this year aimed at eliminating items like test vials and chemical “precursors” that can create deadly nerve and blister agents when mixed — items falling into the U.S. Army’s broad nonstockpile category.

Non-Stockpile Chemical Material Project disposes of former production facilities, nonlethal chemical components that haven’t been mixed to create a weapon, unfilled munitions and other equipment as well as weapons recovered from places like firing ranges or burial sites. Before the 1960s, it was common to burn, bury or dump such items at sea.

The latest project at the Pine Bluff Arsenal, called the Binary Destruction Facility, will entail neutralizing two chemical precursors, DF (methylphosphonic diflouride) and QL (diisopropyl aminoethylmethyl phophonite), said Jason Huffine, a spokesman for the U.S. Army Non-Stockpile Chemical Materiel Project. The project is a division of the U.S. Army Chemical Materials Agency headquartered at Aberdeen Proving Ground, Md.

DF and QL were designed to mix with other chemicals in flight to create nerve agents, Huffine said. Production of the items was banned under a 1991 treaty and DF and QL have been stored at the arsenal since.

There are some 56,000 M20 canisters that contain DF and 300 other drums that hold one of the two precursors, Huffine said. The work will be done in a small portion of an area where such chemicals were once produced. Only 10 percent of the binary production facility remains. When the project wraps up in June, the remainder of the facility will be destroyed. Demolition began in October 2003 and should end by April 2007.

Earlier this year the arsenal began destroying thousands of glass vials and other parts of World War II-era chemical agent identification sets. Thousands of vials and bottles that contain small amounts of chemical agents were dug up at the Pine Bluff Arsenal in the 1980s and were stored in igloos. About 1,200 of the 5,000 vials have been destroyed. The project is expected to last two more years.

Other nonstockpile projects include the destruction of 4,400 empty ton containers that could have chemical residues. The ton containers weigh about 1,600 pounds and measure 7 feet in length.

Since September 2003, 700 of the containers have been destroyed and the rest should be destroyed by late 2006, Huffine said.

Also, the arsenal has examined about half of 1,200 munitions by using gamma rays to check 4.2-inch mortars rounds, 75mm rounds and World War II German Traktor rockets to identify any chemicals inside the munitions, such as blister agents like mustard gas. The assessment is expected to last through the summer.

This story was published Monday, December 12, 2005.