Anniston Star
May 17, 2003

Incineration could begin next month

By Sara Clemence
Star Staff Writer
05-17-2003

The military has approached local officials and administrators with a plan to start limited operations at the chemical weapons incinerator in mid to late June.

Friday, Anniston Army Depot officials and Army contractors presented the plan to members of the Calhoun County Commission, school superintendents, and representatives from area emergency management agencies.

The Army hopes "to get consensus" on a plan to begin destroying rockets containing GB nerve agent at the Anniston Army Depot, said Tim Garrett, site project manager for the Anniston Chemical Agent Disposal Facility.

The Department of Defense has 4.5 million pounds of agent stored in igloos at the Anniston Army Depot, including 42,762 rockets containing GB nerve agent, Garrett said.

Community safety preparations are not yet complete, but, the Army hopes people will agree to the plan because it contains several limitations:

• Workers will move munitions only during daylight hours, when it is safest, officials said.
  
• The facility will begin by draining rockets of agent, breaking up the weapons and burning them, but holding the agent in tanks for several weeks until the facility is more up to speed.
  
• The Army proposes to burn the live agent on weekends or at night, when people are more likely to be at home, and with prior notification to local emergency officials.
  
• They will begin by processing about four or five rockets per hour, a tenth of the facility's capacity.
  
• They will not intentionally burn rockets that can't be drained because the agent has gelled.

The incinerator needs to start up because the stockpile is getting more hazardous with time, officials said.

It is costing the government $300,000 a day to run the facility. Army and Westinghouse officials have expressed concern that funding for Anniston could be cut off.

"Quite frankly, we're not getting the return on our tax dollars that we should be getting." Garrett said.

The proposal was met with surprise and questions from officials, who demanded to know more about the risks of starting operations, and how things would work.

Local officials were non-committal about the plan.

"I've just heard it for the first time today," said Calhoun County Commissioner Robert Downing. "I personally would require some time to analyze the proposal. I'm not in a position to give you an answer today."

County commissioners said they would need time to discuss the plan among themselves and with Commission Chairman Pappy Dunn, who was in the hospital for heart surgery.

"I think this meeting was positive," said Louis Higgins, superintendent for Oxford City Schools. "It lays down some direction for all of us."

The safety plan for schools - overpressurizing an area in each one so that in the event of an accident no agent could leak in - is still being implemented.

The work is not expected to be completed until October.

Jacky Sparks, superintendent for Calhoun County Schools, said that even though school is out of session in the summer, activities still go on.

"We can't protect them fully right now," he said.

The school superintendents said they were angry at only being notified of the meeting Friday. Army officials said they had originally planned to meet with the superintendents next week, but realized that was a mistake.

Depot officials said they had briefed the Congressional delegation on the plan earlier this week.

Most of the delegation could not be reached by press time for comment, but Sen, Richard Shelby said he had not been briefed.

In January, Shelby gave the Army a checklist of safety requirements that had to be met to gain his approval for operations,

"The safety of the community is paramount," Shelby said in a statement.

"The Army and FEMA must continue to concentrate on the remaining safety checklist items I believe any interim destruction plan is premature at this time."

Local elected officials have no legal authority to prevent operations at the incinerator from beginning. The state does, however.

Before the incinerator can start processing any weapons, the Alabama Department of Environmental Management must approve its permit to begin burning agent on a trial basis.

ADEM officials have said that approval is imminent.

"That's the only technical and legal obstacle we have left," Garrett said.

This month, the facility will do a review to verify that the work force is up to speed and able to begin operations. Once the ADEM permit is approved, the Army will notify Congress of its plan to start up the incinerator. They can not start until at least 30 days after notification.

The plan involves a slow ramp-up of operations, Garrett said.

The Army would begin a "shakedown" period of up to 720 hours, leading up to the burning of live liquid agent.

The facility would begin processing M55 rockets, the weapons most frequently found leaking in the stockpile and, Garrett said, the easiest to process.

Workers would move the rockets from storage igloos to the incinerator. The rockets would be punctured and the agent drained out and stored in holding tanks, Garrett said.

In a potential timeline he offered, for about 13 weeks the incinerator would burn only the broken-up rocket parts, starting with about 250 a week, and increasing to more than 700.

At around the 13th week, workers would perform an agent trial burn, processing the GB nerve agent they had stored in the tanks.

They do not plan to burn any gelled rockets - rockets in which the agent has solidified and is impossible to drain out.

There has been some concern about how to safely destroy the gelled agent.

The rockets would be broken up and all the components would be burned together in the deactivation furnace, rather than having the agent go to the liquid incinerator.

About 30 percent of the GB nerve agent rockets are gelled, Garrett said. But the chances of accidentally trying to process one is unlikely, because they know which groups have the particular ingredients in them.

After the agent trial burn is completed, the facility would cut its production rate in half while the state analyzes data to make sure it is within permitted levels. After an initial review, Garrett said, the facility would ramp back up to three-fourths of its total production rate.

At their meeting Friday morning, county commissioners challenged Army officials with questions about monitoring, permit limits and community protection.

"Will there be a mechanism in place to show what your (destruction) efficiencies are, day-by-day, hour-by-hour, during that 720-hour period?" Downing asked.

"we're not able to do the calculations on a daily basis, no," Garrett said.
Commissioner Rudy Abbott questioned the protection of the special-needs population - people who are sick, disabled, underage, or otherwise unable to follow regular evacuation or shelter-in-place plans.

"I want to know whether we're going to be taking care of these people or we're not going to be taking care of these people," Abbott said.

Delois Champ, head of the Calhoun County Emergency Management Agency, said that preparations for the special-needs population in the areas closest to the depot probably wouldn't be complete until the end of July.
Friday afternoon, the Army contractors who operate the facility asked local officials to think about the fact that 70 percent of the employees at the incinerator are Alabamians.

"I would like you to take into consideration that I have 650 workers out there who have the potential for layoffs," said Bob Love, project general manager for Westinghouse.

No layoffs are currently planned, Love said, but the workers are nearly out of active work.

"I don't want to see anybody laid off, but that's not my problem " Sparks said. "I'm going to make the decision that I have to make based on what's best for the kids, not how much the government spends."