Anniston Star
August 9, 2003

Incineration begins today

By Nathan Solheim & Sara Clemence
Star Staff Writers
08-09-2003

WASHINGTON, D.C.

The Army will begin incinerating its stockpile of chemical weapons at the Anniston Army Depot this morning, following a three-day delay.

Acting Secretary of the Army Les Brownlee gave the approval for the startup Friday, after a federal judge in Washington, D.C. denied a motion by incineration opponents to postpone operations further.

By Friday evening, workers at the depot had successfully prepared for the process by moving 90 M55 rockets containing GB nerve agent from a storage bunker to the incineration facility, Army officials said.

The Army plans to destroy two of those rockets today, starting at about 9 a.m., said Mike Abrams, Army spokesman for the incinerator.

One will be fed into the conveyor system, mechanically drained of nerve agent, cut into pieces, and put through a furnace. The drained nerve agent will be collected and burned at a later date; the approximately 5 percent remaining in the rocket should be destroyed during today’s process.

Workers will process a second weapon today “if we are 100 percent sure that there was no problem” with the first, Abrams said.

The plan calls for workers to destroy eight more weapons on Sunday, he said. They will increase that rate over the following weeks to 40 rockets per hour.

A successful burn will mark the beginning of the end for the 2,254 tons of chemical weapons that have been stored at the depot since the 1960s. The stockpile includes rockets, mines, projectiles, cartridges and containers filled with nerve and blister agent. It will take at least seven years to destroy them all, Army officials have said.

The incinerator was supposed to start the process Wednesday, but the Army delayed operations for a court hearing Friday.

U.S. District Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson, known for presiding over the Microsoft antitrust lawsuit, declined to grant a restraining order against the chemical weapons incinerator, saying the plaintiffs couldn’t show that starting the facility would hurt Calhoun County residents.

“The harm you have identified is purely speculative,” Jackson said from the bench. “There is simply insufficient evidence to show clear and present harm will follow.”

“I think it’s good news,” Abrams said later. “Because, apparently, the Army will not be restrained from making this community safer.”

Meanwhile, 21 organizations that oppose incineration must regroup and plot their next legal move.

Craig Williams, director of the Kentucky-based Chemical Weapons Working Group, said he would consult with the group’s attorney, Richard Condit, and the other parties in the petition. Those groups include the Sierra Club and a chapter of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

“We feel that the law, as written, is meant to prevent harm, not to wait until after it has occurred,” Williams said of the decision.

The plaintiffs could file an appeal, but Williams could not say whether they would.

The opponents filed for the restraining order earlier this week, as the Army prepared to start moving chemical weapons and destroying them in the $1 billion incinerator.

The courtroom in Washington, D.C. was only a quarter full Friday. The anti-incineration groups were represented by one attorney; the Army by four.

At the hearing, which lasted more than an hour, Condit argued that the the incinerator puts the community at risk for several reasons.

He said the Army had not performed adequate environmental assessments; didn’t give enough consideration to alternative means of destroying the weapons; and should have taken Anniston’s pre-existing environmental problems into account.

He also questioned whether the Army’s trial burns of substitute chemicals were accurate enough, and said that residents are not prepared for an accident.

The judge asked Condit if incinerator safety issues had already been addressed by the state’s permitting process, and by a lawsuit that is still partly pending in Alabama.

“The Army cannot rely on permitting to meet its obligations,” Condit replied.

Condit said Anniston’s incinerator has not undergone an environmental assessment or follow-up assessment in the past 10 years.

Army attorneys countered that an assessment was not necessary because the facility has not been modified.

Condit said the Army has chosen a process known as neutralization to destroy chemical weapons at other facilities, including those in Kentucky and Maryland. It is not using that method in Anniston, despite the fact that some of the weapons stockpiled here are similar.

Anti-incineration groups have long argued that neutralization, which uses water and chemicals to dilute and deactivate the toxic substances, is safer and more environmentally friendly than incineration.

Army officials countered by telling Jackson that incineration is the safest and most viable destruction method, and that adequate safeguards were assured by the Alabama Department of Environmental Management’s permitting process.

They are also operating under the federal Clean Air Act and the Toxic Substances Control Act, the Army officials said.

Condit raised the issue of PCB contamination in Anniston, saying that under federal environmental law, the Army should have taken the problem into consideration when deciding whether to incinerate here.

Polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, will be released during the incineration process, compounding an existing environmental issue, he said.

Army officials contended that 99.9999 percent of the toxic materials will be destroyed.

“You’re telling me the possibility that .0001 percent of a release of PCBs is going to cause your clients irreparable harm?” Jackson asked Condit.

Condit also argued that there is not enough monitoring of smokestack emissions at the incinerator. He said the process would create low levels of poisonous dioxins, and the Army has done little to ensure public safety.

The Army’s test burns do not adequately predict what will happen under normal operations, he said.

“There is no data collected during accidents or during operations,” Condit said. “The idea of test burning is really a red herring.”

One Army attorney, Norman Rave, argued that the incinerator’s emissions have been quantified through the facility’s trial burns of other non-weapons chemicals, and deemed safe.

“The purpose of the trial burns is to see if the facility operates as it’s set out to,” Rave said. “The emissions will be within the levels authorized and permitted. This has already been decided.”

But Army attorneys presented conflicting information on monitoring.

Rave told the judge there would be no real-time emissions monitoring at the incinerator because it isn’t possible to stick a monitor on a smokestack and evaluate what’s coming out.

Rave said he didn’t know if there was intermittent monitoring of smokestack emissions, but he told Jackson that there are safeguards in place to keep agent from escaping.

Another attorney for the Army, Barry Wiener, said there is emissions monitoring, and that the facility stops operating if any chemical agent is detected.

Emergency preparedness issues have not been completed, Condit said. He told Jackson that protective rooms in schools have not been finished, and special needs residents aren’t prepared.

“What we have here in the rush to burn is that special needs and children are being left in the dust,” Condit said.

Condit also said the toxicity of the weapons is five times greater than first believed, which could mean the residents living close to the incinerator are at greater risk of an agent exposure.

Condit also pointed to an affidavit by Rev. Henry Sterling that says road construction could hamper an evacuation.

Monica Rohde-Buckhorn, of the Chemical Weapons Working Group, attended the hearing and called Jackson’s decision an injustice.

“I imagine this will be disturbing to the community,” she said. “I know that they were hoping to get justice today — they didn’t get that.”