Star Staff Writer
That’s just where officials want to be, especially after difficulties with leaking M55 rockets last year.
“We’re where we thought we would be, from a schedule perspective,” said Tim Garrett, Army project site manager at the Anniston Chemical Agent Disposal Facility. “But safety’s our priority.”
The Anniston Chemical Agent Disposal Facility destroyed 508,905 pounds of GB (sarin) and disposed of 5,534 projectiles through Feb. 10.
Plant crews have turned their attention this year to GB-filled projectiles, or artillery shells. Crews currently are destroying 8-inch projectiles. The 155-mm GB projectiles and 105-mm GB projectiles will follow.
The base had 873,020 pounds of GB nerve agent when disposal began in 2003. The disposal facility had destroyed 445,873 pounds of sarin and more than 1,000 projectiles through early January.
The larger projectiles should be gone by early April, although Garrett said the incinerator’s operators would not aim for a particular completion date.
“This is not about scheduling,” he said. “This is about doing it right.”
The facility has also destroyed 42,762 GB-filled rockets and warheads.
The Army says, overall, it destroyed 35 percent of the nation’s declared chemical weapons stockpile through Feb. 3. Some 93 percent of the mustard agent at the Aberdeen Proving Ground in Aberdeen, Md., has been destroyed. Aberdeen’s stockpile was entirely mustard agent in ton containers, unlike Anniston’s more varied inventory, which requires periodic reconfiguration.
“They have rockets and projectiles, and they have to deal with the actual explosives,” said Jeffrey Lindblad, a spokesman for the Aberdeen Chemical Agent Disposal Facility. “It’s a lot easier when you have ton containers.”
The Tooele Chemical Agent Disposal Facility in Tooele, Utah, which accounted for 45 percent of the total stockpile in the United States, has destroyed more than 50 percent of its inventory, said Melynda Petre, a spokeswoman for the facility. Disposal operations began in 1996.
The Umatilla Chemical Agent Disposal Facility in Umatilla, Ore., has destroyed 59,845 pounds of agent since starting up last September. The facility destroyed six percent of its GB rockets through Feb. 10.
The Army is studying options for meeting disposal deadlines established by the Chemical Weapons Convention, a treaty the United States signed in 1993. The treaty requires signatories to destroy their stockpiles by 2007, with one extension to 2012.
The Army will release an interim report Friday on an “assessment of options” to meet that goal. A Pentagon memo leaked by a watchdog group last month told the Army to consider numerous options, including the transportation of chemical weapons to active disposal facilities, like Anniston’s.
“They’re looking at a lot of different things,” Lindblad said. “We’re doing it up here with everything we have on the sites.”