Star Staff Writer
The Army, in a gesture never formally agreed to by the state, had limited movement of the munitions to after 4:30 p.m. during the week and on weekends while special safe rooms were being constructed at area schools, hospitals and jails.
Also, the Army had limited use of its liquid incinerator, which destroys bulk GB nerve agent collected from drained M-55 rockets, to between the hours of 6 p.m. and 6 a.m. during the week and to weekends until the construction was completed.
The lifting of those restrictions means the Army can move chemical munitions and destroy collected agent at any time.
Army officials said Wednesday they would start moving the weapons during daylight hours beginning today. They said they will not move weapons at night or during bad weather.
“The lifting of the limitations means we can be much more efficient in the operations of the facility,” said Mike Abrams, an Army spokesman. “We have only been able to deliver a few weapons at a time.”
Abrams also said lifting the limitations will increase the rate of destruction. The facility could destroy hundreds of rockets per day operating on a 24-hour schedule.
To date, the incinerator has shut down several times for various mechanical and maintenance functions, the most recent being a two-week break to replace a chain on a conveyor belt.
Destruction restarted Monday, and as of Wednesday more than 5,186 M-55 rockets and 5,226 gallons of agent had been destroyed — a fraction of the depot’s overall stockpile.
Army officials are destroying hundreds of tons of Cold War-era chemical weapons, first beginning with M-55 rockets filled with deadly GB nerve agent. Amid some public outcry, the facility began operations in early August. Currently, incinerator officials are in the process of a “shakedown” period, preparing its systems for the facility’s agent trial burns, set for November.
Denny Tutwiler, of the Mobile district office of the Army Corps of Engineers, which was in charge of the safety preparations, said all work — minus a few minor concerns — has been completed on the area’s schools.
“We’ve got all the kids protected,” Tutwiler said.
Tutwiler said school officials have been trained on the protective equipment, which overpressurizes rooms inside the schools to keep children and teachers safe from a chemical weapons accident.
Everything is completed at facilities outside the schools save a decontamination room for Regional Medical Center and a last-minute addition of The Surgical Center in Oxford, Tutwiler said.
Overpressurization was one of four major areas of concern outlined in a letter by Sen. Richard Shelby in January that threatened to withdraw support of incineration unless the Army met those concerns.
Two others, the distribution of protective equipment and adjustments in toxicity standards, already have been met. Efforts to protect the special-needs population are ongoing, with most parties agreeing the preparations never will be totally complete.
“From a preparedness standpoint, I think this community is more prepared than any of the other Chemical Stockpile Emergency Preparedness Program communities,” said David Ford, a spokesman with the Calhoun County Emergency Management Agency. “I think more has been done here to prepare the community and a lot of people fought very hard to get things done here, and some times that was unpopular, but the Calhoun County Commission stood alone for a long time with the EMA trying to get protective equipment in here and that has been done.”
Calhoun County Commission Chairman Robert Downing, a longtime critic of the Army’s plans, said he expected the Army to do what it promised.
“If they’ve finished all the safety measures we’ve asked them to do, then I don’t know the commission would argue with full operations,” Downing said. “If they haven’t, then the commission would have a problem. We took them at their word that all measures would be completed fully and finally. I don’t expect them to breach that trust.”