Incinerator officials head off lead paint hazard

By Nathan Solheim
Assistant Metro Editor
02-12-2004

Officials at the chemical weapons incinerator plan to construct a building around an outdoor conveyor belt to prevent environmental contamination from the lead paint on old munitions. Westinghouse, the company contracted by the Army to destroy chemical weapons at the Anniston Army Depot’s stockpile, will erect the building around an area where heated metal is discharged from the facility’s metal parts furnace. The building should help prevent lead from escaping into the atmosphere around the incinerator, said Bob Love, the Westinghouse plant manager. The Army has been destroying tons of Cold War-era chemical weapons at its incinerator at the Anniston Army Depot since Aug. 9. Officials have been destroying M-55 rockets filled with deadly GB nerve agent in its deactivation furnace and most of the agent from the rockets in its liquid incinerator in that time. Officials are preparing to start the Anniston Chemical Agent Disposal Facility’s third incinerator, the metal parts furnace, sometime this summer. The metal parts furnace will decontaminate artillery shells, mortars and one-ton containers that have been drained of chemical agent. The conveyor belt is part the cool-down area for metal pieces, which are burned at 1,400 degrees. Thousands of munitions stored at the depot’s chemical weapons stockpile were manufactured using lead-based paint, Love said. “I would say if (the Alabama Department of Environmental Management) saw paint chips flying around they’d write us up for a violation,” Love said. Lead-based paint was banned from production in the late 1970s after it was discovered to be a health hazard, especially for people exposed to it at a young age. The munitions stored at the depot were manufactured in the 1960s, before the federal government banned the use of lead-based paint. Tim Garrett, the Army project manager at the incinerator, said the building will be under engineering controls, which means it would have some environmental protections and chemical agent monitors, called ACAMS. Construction costs are not made public before negotiations. The incinerator currently is destroying munitions containing deadly GB nerve agent, or sarin, said Mike Abrams, the incinerator spokesman, so only artillery shells will be processed in the metal parts furnace this summer. Officials anticipate the building will be completed in time for operations at the metal parts furnace to begin this summer, Abrams said.

About Nathan Solheim

Assistant Metro Editor Nathan Solheim is Minnesota native and a University of Georgia graduate.