Editorials

Incinerator passes second round of environmental testing

04/06/04

The Army announced good news last week about its chemical weapons incinerator in Anniston. The facility demonstrated in new test burns that it can reduce PCBs from its stack emissions at the level required by federal environmental law.

That's especially good news considering that the incinerator flunked its first round of tests last November -- albeit by microscopic margins.

The incinerator's permit requires that 99.9999 percent of any PCBs contained in the rockets will be destroyed in the burning process. In the November trial burns, the incinerator failed three of four tests. In the worst of the three, the incinerator had destroyed only 99.99958 of the PCBs.

As this newspaper said at the time, the margin of failure was exceedingly small and no cause for unnecessary alarm -- yet it was still the difference between abiding by environmental rules and failing to do so. Any shortfall demanded the Army's attention, especially in Anniston, which already is the nation's PCB capital thanks to past industrial pollution.

Army officials blamed the November failure on the minute amount of PCBs involved, saying such low levels are difficult to measure. This time around, incinerator officials said they tried to burn rockets that had higher concentrations of PCBs to get a better idea of how well they were being destroyed.

The Army contends the test burns show the incinerator is fully capable of meeting environmental standards. It has now asked the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to let the incinerator start burning rockets filled with sarin, a deadly nerve agent, at a rate of 17 per hour.

The Army, of course, has every reason to be pleased with the latest test results, and there's no question that there's a good reason to try to burn the dangerous and deteriorating weapons as quickly (and safely) as possible.

Still, it's hard to entirely discount incinerator critics who worry that a few successful tests don't necessarily translate to future compliance regarding PCBs. Because of the contamination that already exists in the Anniston area, it would seem prudent for the EPA to closely monitor PCB emissions at the incinerator.