Anniston Star
August 13, 2003

Editorial

Watch closely

08-13-2003

On Monday word came that the incinerator at the Anniston Army Depot had a mechanical problem involving leaking hydraulic fluid. Operations at the facility were halted until workers could correct the problem and an analysis of the trouble had been completed.

Later on Tuesday, a problem with the pollution abatement system was detected.

What a piece of mundane business, right? Not the kind of thing that would warrant a front page item in The Anniston Star, right?

Wrong and wrong. This is, the good people of northeast Alabama very well understand, not your run-of-the mill industrial plant.

This is a high-tech operation designed to destroy some of the most deadly materials known to man. And anything unusual, no matter how seemingly insignificant should and will be reported in this newspaper.

And anything unusual, no matter how seemingly insignificant, should be reported to this paper and to the public by the officials running the incinerator.

That, we have known for a long time now, is the best way for the Army to build trust with the community.

A shutdown at the incinerator is just that, a shutdown, a significant event. Army officials ought to know the importance of that and should not wait for the community to find out about it in a roundabout way, but pick up the phone and report it to the news media.

Let’s face it, the incinerator has just started operations and problems should be expected. So why not reveal every adjustment, every hiccup?

That builds trust with the community; it doesn’t harm it. People will get the idea the Army is willing to share all information. And that can only be good for everyone involved.

Good, then, for officials who in the late hours Monday willingly gave information to a Star editor who asked about the problems with the hydraulics and the events surrounding it. It would have been far better, however, had this paper learned about the event directly from the Army and not from an alert and informed caller.

Let’s not see incinerator officials start behaving the way some at other stockpile sites have behaved in the past. Let’s not have the community finding out about an incident, no matter its perceived significance, weeks or months after it occurred.

Now that the destruction of the stockpile is under way, aggressive transparency has to be the nature of things until the last weapon is gone.