Pine Bluff Weapons Begin to Be Destroyed

By DAVID HAMMER
The Associated Press
March 29, 2005

The Pine Bluff Arsenal began destroying its stockpile of 3,850 tons of chemical weapons Tuesday, incinerating rockets loaded with nerve gas.

"Everything went well," arsenal spokeswoman Raini Wright said after the first of two M-55 rockets was incinerated for 15 minutes in one of the three furnaces at the installation outside Pine Bluff.

Twelve percent of the nation's chemical weapons are stored at the Pine Bluff Arsenal, and the military plans to incinerate all of them by 2010 to comply with an international treaty that says countries must destroy their stockpiles by 2012. Chemical weapons have also been incinerated at other military depots.

M-55 rockets are loaded with sarin nerve gas and have propellants and rocket motors.

Opponents fearful of some kind accident have not had much success in recruiting members in Arkansas, where the community has welcomed the arsenal's jobs and federal funding.

At Anniston, Ala., where disposal of a smaller stockpile started in 2003, authorities distributed gas masks to surrounding communities, but Pine Bluff Arsenal officials determined that was not necessary.

The rockets have been stored at the Pine Bluff Arsenal, about 40 miles south of Little Rock, since the early 1960s.