Anniston Star
December 31, 2002
A Matter of Trust: Should the burn start now, or wait?
By Jason Landers
Star Staff Writer
12-31-2002
The incinerator in Anniston and its sister in Umatilla, Ore., are almost identical.
Twins formed of concrete and framed with steel, they are third-generation facilities in an Army program that beats swords into plowshares.
For 10 years, the Army's demilitarization furnaces have cleansed
the nation of tons of chemical weapons. Leftover metal parts are
shipped
overseas, mostly to Asia, for recycling.
Studies show the technology the Army employed at its first- and second-generation plants successfully destroyed the hazards without harming surrounding communities or the environment.
Now the Army is readying its third-generation sites for startup. Its officials say Anniston should begin burning agent in early 2003, and Umatilla likely will follow in the fall.
As similar as the facilities are, they operate under different sets of rules.
Year after year, the Army has told Calhoun County residents that being prepared for a chemical weapons accident has nothing to do with the startup of operations.
What they should have said is Alabama opted against connecting the two.
In the early 1990s, before the state wrote the facility's environmental permit, former Calhoun
County Emergency Management Agency director Jim Bennett asked regulators to pin preparedness to the document.
They rejected the request.
"That was a decision we discussed," said Gerald Hardy, land division chief of the Alabama Department of Environmental Management, or ADEM. "We decided, up through our director, not to link that to the program."
ADEM based the decision on an interpretation of the Chemical Stockpile Preparedness Program, or CSEPP - the federally administered program that readies communities near the nation's eight chemical weapons stockpiles for an accident.
"The CSEPP program is aimed for stockpile preparedness," Hardy said, "not for stockpile disposal preparedness."
Under a federal law that gives regulators power to define the parameters by which hazardous waste facilities operate, ADEM drew up a permit that excluded the link.
Under the same federal law, regulators in Oregon successfully joined preparedness with startup. They say the Army didn't make a fuss.
The differences in levels of community preparedness between the two communities are glaring.
Local and state officials in Alabama say the communities under their protection are months, if not years, away from being ready. They favor delaying startup until special equipment for first responders and protective measures for homes and schools are in place.
Though its facility likely will start after Anniston's, Oregon already has implemented many of the measures Calhoun County seeks.
Earlier this year, Oregon certified it had reached adequate preparedness. Its officials credit the requirement in the Umatilla incinerator's operating permit for giving them the needed leverage.
"It was crucial to having the program be successful," said Wayne Thomas, former regulator for the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality. He was lead regulator over the Army's incinerator until a few weeks ago, when he took a job with a company in Atlanta.
Despite Oregon's success, Hardy doesn't foresee Alabama ever changing its requirements.
He paused when asked what benefit the decision gave the community. "I don't know that I have the answer," he said. "Our permit, our task, our mission was protection of human health and the environment. The linkage you are talking about is political."
How Oregon did it
Startup of operations requires moving the weapons. In Anniston,
that means trucking rockets, mines, mortars and projectiles two
miles to the incinerator from bunkers where they are stored by
the thousands. For safety during transport, workers gently place
the weapons
in a giant steel container and lock the container's heavy hydraulic
doors.
Moving the weapons increases risk. "For the processing of chemical weapons, it is the greatest risk," said Tim Garrett, manager of the Army's depot in Anniston.
Garrett said the Army takes additional steps to reduce the dangers, but admits that no system is foolproof. He made assurances that workers in Anniston won't remove weapons from bunkers on days when winds could carry a toxic plume off-post.
But the Army makes no guarantee that an explosion inside a bunker during transfer won't spark an igloo fire - the worst-case scenario. If that happens, a plume could settle over the community. There are several documented cases of accidents in bunkers that housed standard munitions.
Cognizant of the uncertain perils and struggling to get federal preparedness dollars, Oregon emergency officials asked state regulators for help. At the time, Oregon's Environmental Quality Department was drawing up the Army's permit under authority of the federal Resource Conservation and Recovery Act.
Within that act is a regulatory tool known as the omnibus provision. It grants regulators broad powers in imposing permit conditions that protect public health and the environment.
Thomas said the Department of Environmental Quality, or DEQ, cited that provision as justification for the preparedness link. "We wanted the communities to be protected and able to respond as soon as possible," he said.
Effects of the union
Chris Brown, the Oregon CSEPP director, said DEQ's preparedness
requirement grabbed the Army's attention and got its officials
more involved directly in the preparedness program. (The Army
and the Federal Emergency Management Agency jointly administer
CSEPP, but FEMA traditionally has the lead role in dealing with
state and local officials.)
"Without meeting that requirement, the governor did not sign and (the Army) wouldn't start the trial burns," Brown said.
Hermiston, Ore., fire Chief Jim Stearns described the requirement as a stopwatch hanging over the Army's head. If the Army didn't reach the mark in time, he said, its billion-dollar incinerator would sit idle. The link "really needs to be there regardless."
According to the requirement, the incinerator couldn't start until the governor certified a laundry list of requirements had been met.
Among them, schools and hospitals had to be over-pressurized - a process that keeps outdoor air from entering by creating a seal and re-circulating indoor air. Also, the permit required sheltering facilities at buildings where crowds gather, as well as decontamination equipment for first responders, emergency sirens and tone alert radios.
Army: link had no effect
Army CSEPP spokesman John Yaquaint said the requirement had "no real impact" on the preparedness program.
"We're here to give the maximum protection to the public until the stockpile is gone," he said.
But Yaquaint gave a subsequent statement that at least implied some effect. Asked if startup in Anniston should be delayed pending emergency preparedness improvements, he replied,
"The key to startup of incinerator operations is not CSEPP, but compliance with permit requirements."
FEMA officials didn't dismiss the effect as easily.
"Obviously, it brought more attention to it," said Craig Conklin, head of the agency's CSEPP program.
Conklin maintained the Army never pressured FEMA to do more in Oregon than at other CSEPP sites or speed the process because of the requirement.
"The only pressure we have is to make sure that the decisions we make are in the interest of public health and safety," he said.
Unprepared in Alabama
Pressed three times to say whether Calhoun County was prepared for a chemical incident, Conklin replied, "That is a tough question to answer, and it is a politically sensitive question."
Calhoun County is better prepared than it was, Conklin said. "I think if an accident should happen, the county folks down there would be able to protect their citizens."
County folks disagree, as does the state's head of emergency management.
Mike Burney, director of the county EMA, said Calhoun County is far from ready. He also says state regulators dropped the ball when they didn't link preparedness in the permit.
"There should have been a closer tie," he said.
State EMA Director Lee Helms said, "I don't think we should start anything until the community is better prepared. We could get as close as we need to get in the next few years if decisions are made immediately and funding is made available."
Helms sat in on the meetings with Govs. Fob James and Don Siegelman when the issue of linking preparedness with startup was raised, and he maintains the situation would be different if the link had been made.
"I think it would have definitely helped us," he said.
As the situation stands, with startup approaching, Helms accuses FEMA and the Army of letting the community down.
It is an accusation to which Conklin, who has headed CSEPP
at the agency for less than six months, takes exception. "What
we have here," he said, then paused, "if there is cause
for concern is honest differences of opinion."