Birmingham News
August 7, 2003

Opinion

About-face:  Anniston gets temporary reprieve on incinerator

08/07/03

The U.S. Army did the right thing in temporarily postponing its planned startup of a chemical weapons incinerator in Anniston. The delay may not be long - perhaps just to the end of this week - but it ought to give Anniston residents at least a little more time to prepare their homes and families.

Any false notions that Anniston residents were already prepared should have been shot down by scenes this week of people standing in line for hours at a stretch to get emergency gear offered by the government.

Even though the gear has been available for months, the distribution center started getting overrun this past week when the Army announced its plans to start burning deadly nerve agents.

True, part of the blame lies with residents themselves. They should have been working weeks ago to equip themselves and to develop their families' emergency plans in case of an incinerator accident.

But the Army doesn't deserve any gold stars either for its shoddy incinerator planning. Without going over the extensive list of missteps, the Army dropped the ball so many times that it's no wonder some residents threw up their hands and did nothing.

The Army planned to press ahead with incineration anyway, starting Wednesday. Though it's not clear why, the Army did an about-face Tuesday and agreed to hold off while a federal judge considers whether to grant a temporary restraining order against the incinerator.

"In order to provide the court with sufficient time to fully consider this motion and the government's response, the Army has notified the court that it will voluntarily defer the start of agent operations until the hearing on the motion," Army spokesman Mike Abrams said.

Whatever the reasons, the Army made the right call. Not because the incinerator should remain in a permanent state of limbo. Far from it.

Incinerator opponents argue, perhaps correctly, that the Army should have considered safer alternatives than burning the chemical weapons. They point out that in future sites, the Army plans to neutralize the weapons with warm water and other nontoxic liquids.

But in Anniston, taxpayers already have spent more than a billion dollars for an incinerator, and the chemical weapons pose a threat even sitting in storage. Given that, it hardly seems constructive to talk of dismantling the incinerator and starting over with a brand-new plan to destroy the deadly nerve gas stockpile.

The risk of burning the weapons is smaller than the risk of doing nothing. But that doesn't mean it's OK to fire up the incinerator when Anniston residents aren't equipped for an emergency, however unlikely that contingency may be. This week's last-minute run on protective gear shows the community was not ready.

Whatever the reason for this temporary reprieve, the Army's about-face at least gives Anniston residents more time to prepare.