Anniston Star
November 27, 2002

Tooele lessons ignored at Anniston, other incinerators, report says

By Jason Landers
Star Staff Writer

A General Accounting Office report says the Army's lessons-learned program for incinerators that will burn chemical weapons is effective, "but "

The safety program could be improved and expanded, the GAO's report concludes. It was submitted to Congress in September.

One case the report cites alludes to lessons learned at the Army's incinerator in Tooele, Utah, that were ignored at incinerators in Anniston, Umatilla, Ore., and Pine Bluff, Ark.

The oversight jeopardized the safety of workers, but did not present a situation where deadly nerve and blister agent could have escaped these facilities.

Officials at Tooele found that fiber-reinforced plastic pipes connected with that facility's pollution abatement system would leak under pressure, allowing the sodium hydroxide they contained to escape. The heated mixture could have burned workers or spilled into the environment.

Officials at Tooele fixed the problem by replacing the plastic pipes with metal. Then they told the other sites about it, based on information provided by Program Manager for Chemical Demilitarization - the branch of the Army that oversees the destruction.

Army officials heard the lesson but ignored the fix, opting for a lower-cost material in Alabama, Oregon and Arkansas where fiber-reinforced plastic pipes were used despite the experience of Tooele, according to an Associated Press report.

The plastic pipes, which were called for in the design specifications, cost much less.

During testing in February of the Anniston pollution-abatement system, fiber-reinforced plastic pipes that contained sodium hydroxide started leaking under pressure.

As has been reported, some failures were catastrophic. Pipes came completely apart. Others were small leaks.

At first, the Army opted to patch the pipes. Then it settled for a more lasting repair: substitute the plastic pipes with more expensive, but safer, metal ones. It was a call that, at the time, Anniston officials insisted was necessary to protect worker safety. That same call has not been made by officials in Oregon and Arkansas.

"How to avoid the problem was learned," said Army PMCD spokesman Greg Mahall, speaking of the incident in Tooele. "But when it was translated to Anniston, someone followed (design) specifications in a cost-cutting measure and said that the other (plastic) piping would work just as well."

It was a costly assumption. The Army, which is still exchanging plastic pipes for metal ones at its facility in Anniston, has spent in excess of $750,000 on the project.

"This decision ultimately caused serious safety concerns, higher costs and delayed the schedule," the GAO said.

According to the Associated Press, the National Academies' National Research Council will release its own study on lessons learned at Tooele and Johnston Atoll in the Pacific Ocean next week.