Cleanup of McClellan former chemical training site to resume

By Jessica Centers
Star Staff Writer
08-06-2004

The state’s environmental agency has given the Army permission to resume excavation of scrap ordnance from its former toxic agent yard at McClellan. Cleanup at the former chemical weapons school has been on hold since November, when the work turned up a vial containing chemical agent. The permission to resume the cleanup was given by the Alabama Department of Environmental Management less than a week after the agency cited the Army for hazardous waste violations at McClellan and ordered that it cease removal of unexploded ordnance (UXO). Gary Harvey, transition force manager at McClellan, said he wrote to ADEM, explaining that cleanup at the former chemical weapons training school is unrelated to the UXO cleanup. It involves a different group of contractors and Army engineers. Before the start of the excavation at the chemical weapons school that turned up the vial of agent, an assessment of the area where soldiers trained with chemical agent in the 1960s found that there was a remote risk of encountering agent, but that the scrap material needed to be removed. The discovery of the intact pre-World War II training ampoule, or vial, which contained less than half a teaspoon of actual agent, brought a halt to the work and a reassessment of the risk. Harvey said the reassessment found that the chance of finding chemical agent still is remote. The Army Corps of Engineers-Mobile District is ready to resume excavation. In the 1960s, Reservoir Ridge at Fort McClellan was the place where soldiers learned how to handle chemical agent. Real agent was used, and Harvey was one of their teachers. “We used to think nothing about hauling this stuff around,” Harvey said. “If we knew then what we know now, we wouldn’t have done it.” The six-acre toxic agent yard was closed off to the rest of the fort by a gated fence, just as it is now. But back then the yard held such chemicals as liquid smoke, tearing agent, a 1-ton container of chlorine and four 1-ton containers of mustard agent. One couldn’t step onto the premises without a fitted and functional gas mask in hand. The students learned such skills as how to transfer agent into smaller containers and how to change valves without allowing agent to escape. The containers they used were glass, bottles and vials, and empty artillery shells, because they wouldn’t leak. The students learned to use a manual drill to make a hole in a shell containing live agent and pull out a sample. During a conflict, a lab could use such a sample to identify an enemy’s chemical weapon. The containers they used were put in a 55-gallon drum that held a decontaminating agent, left there for a few days, and then thrown into a sump — basically a hole in the ground. When the training school closed In 1973, all of the agent left on the toxic yard was destroyed. The sump was filled with dirt. The cleanup that now is resuming will dig up the dirt — about 2200 cubic yards of it — to make sure all the buried containers were free of chemical agent when they were discarded. Because Harvey worked at the training school, he can help engineers understand what was used and how it was discarded. “Everything he told us before we started digging was actually where he said it would be,” said Damon M. Young, a geologist with the Army Corps of Engineers, Mobile District, who is leading the cleanup. Young doesn’t expect to find any agent, but he’s not taking any chances. The team of about 15 people from the Army Corps of Engineers, Shaw Environmental, QuickSilver Analytics of Edgewood, and the Army Tech Escort Unit, are in the midst of a two-day practice. Tanks with air for the personnel to breathe are in place not far from the excavation site. Young expects just 1 percent of the soil to be scrap material. The workers will dig until they’re satisfied that they’ve found everything – likely about six to 10 feet. The containers will be set out at the site for the air around them to be sampled. If no agent is detected, the scraps will be moved about 20 feet to a specially constructed box. The temperature will be adjusted to 70 degrees and the air in the enclosed space will again be sampled. If nothing is detected, Young can confirm no agent is present on the material. The rounds themselves will be chopped up on site so that they look like scrap metal. The material will be transported to Joplin, Mo., for incineration. At the entrance to the toxic agent yard, sits an interim holding facility. It’s a trailer-sized, airtight box with an alarm, locks and fire suppression system, that was used last December to store the ampoule until the Army’s Technical Escort Unit, based in Maryland, arrived to destroy it. The holding facility was brought in specifically for the ampoule, and it remains there. The Army’s discovery of the training vial sparked some controversy with the Anniston-Calhoun County Joint Powers Authority at the time. The JPA criticized the Army for letting about a week and a half pass before the public was notified. The Army says the public will be notified if any agent is found during the renewed excavation.

About Jessica Centers

Jessica Centers, a University of Missouri graduate, covers business for The Anniston Star.