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Editorials
Risk
and danger
In our opinion
03-16-2007
The noise you hear coming from Anniston's incinerator is the sound of nearly four years of progress. All of the M55 rockets have been destroyed, allowing the Army to claim that 97 percent of the risk posed by the chemical weapons stockpile has been destroyed. We hope the Army is right on its risk assessment. If so, that's certainly good news for this community's collective ears.
"We are out of the rocket business in Anniston," Mike Abrams, an Army spokesman for Anniston's incinerator, told The Star last week.
Now, a few reminders.
Don't forget that there remains a stockpile of 155 mm artillery shells and land mines armed with the nerve agent VX that must be destroyed; all of Anniston's VX is scheduled to be destroyed by the end of 2008, the Army says. Following that will be the destruction of mustard blister agent that's expected to take another three years.
In other words, while the public risk has been greatly reduced, there are several years of destruction that must be completed before the incinerator's stated purpose -- destroying Anniston's sizeable Cold War-era stockpile of chemical weapons -- is reached. Neither the public, the Army nor Westinghouse Anniston, which is under contract to operate the incinerator, should relax until the entire job is finished with a high degree of safety. Every rocket, every land mine, every drop of agent -- gone.
Each milestone that passes at Anniston's incinerator reminds us that the facility is, in many ways, a visitor to Calhoun County. It was constructed and charged with an important task, but it was not intended to remain one of our county's longtime employers. Calhoun County residents have believed the Army's intentions were for the incinerator to be a temporary facility; we have no reason to believe otherwise.
We yearn for the day when the chemical weapons are gone from Calhoun County -- and the day when Anniston's incinerator destroys its last agent, cleans up its mess and shutters its facility.
That's when we can truly champion the progress made. When all of the risk and all of the weapons are gone.