Anniston Star
September 27, 2003

Faulty instrument halts Thursday night burning at incinerator

By Nathan Solheim
Star Staff Writer
09-27-2003

Officials at the Anniston Chemical Disposal Facility stopped processing rockets and burning liquid agent late Thursday night because an instrument that monitors the amount of agent being fed into the liquid incinerator was found to be faulty.

The Army has been destroying chemical weapons at the incinerator since August. Workers were destroying M-55 rockets filled with GB nerve agent Thursday evening, as well as bulk liquid agent collected from the rockets.

While burning the collected agent, workers detected a faulty agent-flow metering device. That device regulates the amount of agent being sprayed into the liquid incinerator, said Army spokesman Mike Abrams.

“It’s not something we consider to be a big deal,” Abrams said Friday.

Incinerator officials had intended to continue processing rockets Thursday night after the discovery of a suspicious package in a nearby parking area kept the facility locked down much of the afternoon. The bomb squad from the Anniston Army Depot was called to secure the area and found that the package contained a wall clock. Depot officials said Friday the investigation of how the clock came to be where it was is continuing.

Thursday night’s glitch at the incinerator had nothing to do with the suspicious package, Abrams said. Workers spent much of Friday repairing the problem. Replacement or adjustment of the instrument may be required, he said.

Abrams said operations will continue this weekend, with the liquid incinerator operating Friday night and rocket processing resuming this weekend.

First, the bulk agent that has been collected from rockets must be destroyed to make room in the agent-collection tanks for more.

Abrams couldn’t say how workers had detected the faulty device, other than to say there “was some ambiguity in what they saw on the monitor.”

The incinerator has been soldiering its way through a “shakedown” process, in which officials are bringing the facility up to its full operational capacity before it goes through a major trial in November.

The facility has been shut down several times for equipment issues or maintenance activities.

“We’ve only stopped operations 11 days, but every shift change prior to every operation, we’re checking equipment and procedures to make sure everything is right,” Abrams said. “In some ways, checking this equipment is part and parcel to the operation of the facility. I would liken this to an airline pilot, they do an inspection every time they take off.”