Star Staff Writer
A vial containing chemical agent used in pre-World War II training was found Nov. 21 at a former Fort McClellan chemical weapons training site, but the Army Corps of Engineers did not inform the public until Tuesday.
Members of the Anniston-Calhoun County Joint Powers Authority say the materials found do not pose a health or safety risk, but that they do not agree with the way the Army handled the situation.
Board members say they intend to inform the public promptly of any hazardous material found during environmental cleanup of the property controlled by the board. The Army still controls the area where the material was found.
JPA Board member Pete Conroy said that in a community where many people don’t trust the Army, withholding the information looks bad.
“The material found does not cause me concern. It was in an isolated area, secure behind a gate, unbroken,” he said. “But the procedure by which the incident was handled infuriates me — the fact that the information was kept from the public purposefully.”
Marilyn Phipps, spokeswoman for the Mobile District of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, said the information was not released immediately because the area where the agent was found is not near any housing and the find did not present any danger.
“We knew about it,” she said. “We handled it in a routine manner. There was nothing to announce. There’s procedure in place to handle it.”
Employees of Shaw Environmental, a company under contract to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, discovered the ampule, a sealed glass container, during the excavation of scrap material as part of the Base Realignment and Closure cleanup effort.
According to a press release from the Corps of Engineers, work was stopped after the ampule was found. Air monitors gave no indication of chemical agent release.
The Army sent the Technical Escort Unit from Aberdeen Proving Grounds, Md., to the site to evaluate the ampule. The TEU determined that it was used for pre-World War II chemical identification training.
Of the eight-teaspoons of solution, 5 percent, or less than half a teaspoon, is actual chemical agent.
The TEU placed the ampule in a special, multiple-layer sealed container, which was placed inside a fenced area with 24-hour guards.
An Interim Holding Facility specifically designed for storing potentially hazardous waste will be delivered to McClellan to store the ampule until it is destroyed.
“It was common practice in the mid-20th century to use dilute chemical agent solutions or simulants to train soldiers to identify enemy battlefield chemicals,” reads the statement from the Corps of Engineers. “The material was decontaminated after training and buried on-site to await later retrieval.”
Phipps said the TEU guessed the material was a mustard-like training agent.
“If the ampule had broken, the only thing you would get is tearing eyes,” she said.
Anniston Mayor Chip Howell said the JPA was notified Nov. 24 that something had been discovered and had been waiting for the test results. He said it was the Army’s responsibility to issue a press release.
Howell said when they learned Tuesday the amount and type of agent, JPA members felt the public needed to be notified.
JPA Executive Director Dan Cleckler said the JPA decided Tuesday to issue its own release if the Army chose not to.
Howell said the discovery was not unexpected on property that had been used to house training exercises, and that is one of the reasons the area has remained under Army control.
“There are still issues here,” he said. “I don’t expect it to be an every week or every month occurrence, but it may happen again.”
City Councilman Ben Little said whoever made the decision not to release the information may not need to be fired, but does need to move away from Anniston.
He said the JPA and the Army need to be open about the environmental cleanup of McClellan.
“There’s nothing to hide out here,” he said.