So when ADEM actually acts like the environmental protection agency Alabamians want and need, we feel it our duty to give then an enthusiastic “Atta boy.”
So here it is — “ATTA BOY ADEM.”
Last week folks out in Pine Bluff, Ark., who have been all enthusiastic about the chemical weapons disposal operations there, sent a truck loaded with chemical waste to Alabama to be deposited in the Emelle facility run by Chemical Waste Management.
Figuring they could get the necessary permit while the truck was on the road (or that once it arrived ADEM would relent and let them in) Pine Bluff officials sent it our way.
But ADEM would have none of it and notified Chemical Waste Management that the truck should be sent back to Arkansas. “Since we are requiring Anniston to dispose of its waste on site,” Scott Hughes, ADEM spokesman explained, “Pine Bluff should be able to take care of its waste on site” as well.
Good for ADEM.
One of our great concerns is that efforts will be made to turn our incinerator into a regional disposal facility. This was not its purpose and this was not why this newspaper supported building it. The Anniston incinerator was constructed to destroy Cold War-era chemical weapons that are stockpiled at the Anniston Army Depot — and only those weapons. When that is done, the incinerator is supposed to be dismantled.
That was what we were promised. That is the promise we expect to be kept.