Anniston Star
October 15, 2003

Incinerator restarts

By Sara Clemence
Star Staff Writer
10-15-2003

The chemical weapons incinerator at the Anniston Army Depot resumed operations late Monday after a two-week maintenance shutdown.

The incinerator was built to destroy the 2,253 tons of chemical weapons, including nerve agent and blister agent, stored at the Anniston Army Depot since the 1960s. The facility began live operations in August, processing M55 rockets filled with GB nerve agent.

One of the repairs that had to be done over the past two weeks was replacing the chain on the conveyor system that carries incinerated rocket parts to waste bins, keeping them hot to destroy any remaining chemical agent.

“That was the major problem,” said Mike Abrams, spokesman for the Anniston Chemical Agent Disposal Facility. “There were some other minor issues that were covered. There were some metering-calibration issues.”

The facility operated on Tuesday as well, getting up to a speed of about 30 rockets per hour, Abrams said.

“During the course of today we got around 30 rockets an hour. That was not a sustained rate. But we did demonstrate the capability of processing 30 rockets an hour.”

Since August, the facility has drained, chopped up and burned a total of 4,749 rockets.

The GB agent, or sarin, is being burned in bulk in a separate furnace that was scheduled to run Tuesday and Wednesday nights.

The Alabama Department of Environmental Management expects to receive soil results today from the area along Choccolocco Creek in Talladega County where two 55-gallon drums from the incinerator were found last week, said Clint Niemeyer, ADEM spokesman.

Incinerator workers took and tested the soil samples and the samples of water found inside one of the barrels. The water results are also expected today, Niemeyer said.