Anniston's incinerator right on target

By Rob Jordan
Star Staff Writer
07-18-2004

Nearly one year after its startup, the Anniston chemical weapons incinerator appears to be on schedule for destruction of the stockpile here. But major challenges still loom for the facility and for the global effort to eliminate chemical weapons. The incinerator, in operation since August 2003, has burned all non-leaking, drainable sarin-filled rockets in the Anniston Chemical Activity’s stockpile. That’s about 5 percent of the stockpile’s munitions and 7 percent of the stockpile’s agent, according to incinerator officials. Burning through the remaining 4.1 million pounds of sarin, VX and blister agent in the stockpile likely will take until 2010, according to Tim Garrett, the Army’s site manager. The incinerator is scheduled to finish destroying sarin-filled rockets this year and begin burning VX-filled munitions in 2006, before moving on to munitions filled with blister agent, the stockpile’s least dangerous component. Despite progress at Anniston and other sites, the international effort to destroy chemical weapons is far behind schedule and astronomically more costly than anticipated. Stockpiles in the U.S. and Russia, account for almost all of the world’s known chemical weapons. Neither country will meet the 2007 deadline for full destruction set in a 1997 treaty, according to a March report by the General Accounting Office. A proposed 2012 deadline also is unlikely to be met, according to the report. Army officials blame regulatory and environmental delays, among other factors, for the slow pace and a program cost which has ballooned from $2 billion to a projected $25 billion. While work has proceeded apace in Anniston, only two other facilities have managed similar or better levels of effectiveness. The Army’s incinerator at Johnston Atoll in the Pacific Ocean finished burning thousands of pounds of chemical weapons in 2001. As of this week, an incinerator in Tooele, Utah, has destroyed about 50 percent of the stockpile there, according to Greg Mahall, spokesman for the Army's chemical materials agency in Maryland. An incinerator in Pine Bluff, Ark., is set to begin burns this summer and a similar facility in Umatilla, Ore., will fire up in August. Four of the Army’s disposal sites use or will use neutralization, a technology that uses sodium hydroxide and water to neutralize the chemicals. Two of these sites, Pueblo, Colo. and Blue Grass, Ky., are still in the design stage, while another site, in Newport, Ind., is testing systems in anticipation of startup. The only neutralization facility in operation, in Aberdeen, Md., has destroyed slightly more than a quarter of the stockpile there, according to Mahall.

About Rob Jordan

Rob Jordan covers criminal justice issues for The Star.