Neighbors of nerve agent incinerator unconcerned despite
leaks
By JAY REEVES
The Associated Press
3/19/2004, 1:51 p.m. CT
ANNISTON, Ala. (AP) -- Despite leaks and unanswered questions at the complex housing the Army's newest chemical weapons incinerator, people who live nearby are more worried about spring allergies than the threat of deadly nerve gas clouds.
Fear and uncertainty were common in the countryside of east Alabama last summer when the $1 billion program began chopping up and burning rockets filled with sarin nerve agent. It was the Army's first try at incinerating chemical weapons in a populated area.
But no one has been hurt by any lethal agent during the destruction of about 21,500 rockets filled with nearly 23,000 gallons of sarin, and some people say they have all but forgotten the incinerator is operating just seven months into a run that will last for at least seven years.
Even a series of recent mishaps — including the release or detection of tiny amounts of nerve agent in areas away from the incinerator — don't seem to be a worry, despite warnings from anti-burning activists that the Army is covering up problems.
"I hear they've had a couple of slip-ups out there, but I'm at the stage in my life where I'll probably fall down and break my damn neck before something happens out there," said retiree Dorothy Clark, who lives less than a half-mile from the incinerator gate.
Frank Gann, 69, follows news reports about the incinerator but said he doesn't worry about it. The huge Cold War-era weapons stockpile at the Anniston Army Depot concerns him a lot more than the incinerator being used to destroy it.
"They've got to get rid of it," Gann said Thursday outside the roadside flea market he operates with his wife.
The depot, located about 50 miles east of Birmingham, was home for some four decades to about 2,254 tons of nerve agents and mustard gas stored in dirt-covered, concrete lined bunkers secured with thick doors. The cache — stored within nine miles of 35,000 people — represented 7 percent of America's chemical weapons stockpile.
The munitions began leaking decades ago, and the Army decided to destroy the weapons at the depot rather than send them somewhere else. Years of planning, safety precautions, legal wrangling and construction reached a climax last August when the incinerator began destroying M55 rockets loaded with the nerve agent sarin, also called GB.
Under pressure from state and local officials, the military gave residents thousands of gas mask-like hoods to use in case of an accident. The incinerator's neighbors also got boxes filled with duct tape and plastic sheeting to seal up a room for shelter.
No one has needed the safety gear so far. Still, operations around the chemical stockpile haven't been perfect, particularly in the last few weeks.
Trace amounts of sarin escaped from a storage bunker earlier this month, and about the same a monitor showed a small amount of lethal VX nerve agent in woods at the Army's old Fort McClellan, about four miles from the storage area.
Officials are still baffled about what happened, but incinerator spokesman Mike Abrams said Friday officials "have no doubt" the problem was a false reading, not real VX.
Meanwhile, tests found the incinerator released a small amount of PCBs from its stack during trial burns. PCBs, an electrical insulator long-banned from use because of health fears, already is an issue in Anniston because of contamination from a plant that once made the chemical.
The Army said the PCBs emission was minute, but it was enough to prompt the Environmental Protect Agency to order more tests. The evaluation was completed this week, although no results have been released.
The Army says none of the problems hurt anyone or posed a health threat to the community. Just this past Wednesday, the incinerator passed what the military called a milestone: The safe destruction of half of the sarin-filled rockets stored at the depot.
"We are reducing the risk our community faces due to the storage of the chemical weapons," site manager Tim Garrett said in a statement.
Still, critics persist.
The Kentucky-based Chemical Weapons Working Group has asked the Pentagon to investigate operations at the Anniston incinerator, which it claims is fudging test results and covering up problems. The head of the group said the community has been lulled into inaction by the Army, a major employer in the Anniston area.
"There is a very significant public relations effort that strongly leans in the direction of just providing the positive elements of what's going on out there," said Craig Williams, director of the organization.
Perhaps, but some say they've simply gotten used to living near a chemical weapons stockpile big enough to kill millions. At The Outpost, an Army surplus store near the depot, customers ignore tests of the wailing sirens that the military would use to warn of a true emergency.
"It'll go off and they just keep on shopping," said owner Sam Walker.