Anniston Star
October 18, 2003
Star Staff Writer
Chemicals used at the Anniston chemical weapons incinerator have turned up in a 55-gallon drum found near Choccolocco Creek last week.
Trace amounts of chemicals that were substituted for deadly chemical weapons in trial burns were found in liquid in one barrel.
The second drum was empty. Soil tests turned up clean.
Incinerator officials had said the drums were uncontaminated when sent off-site for recycling. The chemicals they had originally held had been contained in plastic bottles and thick poly liners, they said.
One of the substances, tetrachloroethylene, is used in dry cleaning, and can be harmful at high levels. The other chemical, hexachloroethane, is not very toxic, according to a federal health agency.
The amounts found in the barrel, equivalent to about 20 drops in a swimming pool, were far below hazardous waste standards, said Scott Hughes, spokesman for the Alabama Department of Environmental Management.
But, he said, “there is no way for us to speculate what levels were in there, if any, a week ago, a month ago, six months ago.”
The drums were found on a high, quiet creek bank off Silver Run Road in Talladega County. They may have washed up during May’s heavy rains.
The drums bore labels reading “Empty,” and “Westinghouse Anniston,” the name of the company operating the incinerator.
Army officials said the containers had been sent to a local scrap metal company, Shorty’s Southern Yard, but that there are no tracking documents.
“We know those drums left empty,” said Mike Abrams, spokesman for the Anniston Chemical Agent Disposal Facility. “They could have had a fingerprint smudge.”
The state environmental agency will not conduct its own investigation, but has asked the Army do so, Hughes said.
“If we see something that looks out of place, we will still have access to go and look at any records they have,” Hughes said.
Abrams said that the facility is watching how it handles similar containers in the future, but may not delve deeper into the incident.
“We do not need to look into it to make the community safe, because we do not handle chemical weapons this way,” he said.
“It’s very difficult to explain, yes,” he said. “But we have not polluted or contaminated the environment.”
The incinerator was built to destroy the hundreds of thousands of chemical weapons stored at the Anniston Army Depot since the 1960s. The weapons contain nerve and blister agent. Live operations began in August.