Arkansas incinerator to begin operations in March: Pine Bluff facility modeled after Anniston’s

By Brian Lyman
Star Staff Writer
02-11-2005

Pine Bluff Arsenal is scheduled to start burning 7.7 million pounds of deadly Cold War-era chemical weapons in late March. Officials at the Arkansas incinerator, which is modeled on Anniston’s, said the stockpile should be destroyed by 2010. Pine Bluff’s stockpiles, like Anniston’s, consist of VX and GB rockets, VX land mines and blister agents. Destruction was scheduled to begin later this month, but the Army ordered additional readiness training for personnel. "There always are schedules for what we have planned," said Greg Mahall, a spokesman for the Army’s Chemical Materials Agency in Aberdeen, Md. "We have a less than perfect record meeting our original schedules, because things change." The additional training includes tests on mock weapons and responses to natural and manmade disasters. "The personnel have confirmed their readiness to handle the process," said Raini K. Wright, a spokeswoman for Pine Bluff. "We just want to provide additional training to be sure." Pine Bluff will be the Army’s fourth chemical weapons incinerator in the United States. Anniston’s incinerator went online in August 2003. The Army also is destroying weapons in Tooele, Utah, Aberdeen, and Umatilla, Ore. A fifth chemical disposal facility will open in Newport, Ind., later this year. The Army destroyed all chemical weapons on Johnston Island in the Pacific between 1990 and 2000. Pine Bluff has one of the larger weapon stockpiles in the country, accounting for 12 percent of the United States’ chemical inventory. A Pentagon memo leaked by a watchdog group last month noted possible budget cutbacks that would postpone or cancel the construction of neutralization facilities in Pueblo, Colo., and Richmond, Ky. The United States must destroy chemical agent stockpiles by 2007 under the Chemical Weapons Convention, a treaty signed in 1993. The treaty allows an extension to 2012. The Army is studying the possibility of transporting chemical weapons from those sites and others to other facilities like Anniston’s. Mahall said the opening of Pine Bluff would not impact that study. Tim Garrett, the Army’s project site manager, said those around the facility should expect the process to start slowly. "They’re going to go slow and methodically to ramp up to a steady operation," he said. "I hope people don’t judge them by production numbers."