Incinerator barrels found in rural creek bed again

For the second time in a year, hazardous materials barrels from the Anniston chemical weapons incinerator have been found in a rural creek bed by a Department of Transportation employee.

"Very much like the last ones, they held material for our surrogate trial burn at the metal parts furnace," said Donavan Mager, a spokesman for Westinghouse Anniston, the contractor operating the incinerator for the Army. "Again, they were labeled and sent off to the same contractor."

Westinghouse contracted with a local scrap dealer, Shorty's Southern Yard in Anniston, to haul the drums away sometime around June 2002. Officials said they did not contract with a hazardous waste facility to treat or destroy the drums because they were not believed to have been touched by hazardous materials.

"We thought we were doing the right thing," said Mike Abrams, a spokesman for the Army.

In October, two drums were found on the banks of Choccolocco Creek, and tests later revealed that one contained a residue of the hazardous material used in the tests of the incinerator.

Spokesmen for the Army and Westinghouse said Wednesday that they did not know how chemicals identical to those used in the test burn came to be in the bottom of the barrel, since the chemicals arrived in bottles that should have been fed into the incinerator while still sealed and full.

The trial burn was designed to ensure that the furnace could destroy a precise amount of material and get clear emissions test results.

"That's a question that we've asked, and it's one of the questions I don't think we have an answer for: Where did the residue come from?" Mager said.

The chemicals found in that barrel were hexachloroethane and tetrachloroethylene.

This week's barrels were found on the banks of Snow Creek, a tributary of Choccolocco, with 10 gallons of liquid in one and less than a quart in the other. That will be tested, said Scott Hughes, a spokesman for the Alabama Department of Environmental Management.

"Samples were collected, and they are being analyzed," said Hughes.

Mager said the new finding is especially puzzling since workers walked the creek beds after the October find, searching for barrels from the incinerator.

ADEM does not plan to investigate the incident, Hughes said. He said that last fall, Shorty's owner told officials that he may have sold the barrels for re-use and some may have floated off his yard during rain.

But Shorty's owner Jim Griffin said Wednesday there were never any records of him buying the drums. "Westinghouse has said it did not keep paperwork tracking the barrels' disposal because they were not believed to contain hazardous waste," he said.

Although he did not know about this week's discovery, he said the drums found in October had tops on them.

"We don't buy drums with tops on them - no way," Griffin said. "So I don't think they came from my yard."

Now, Hughes said, Anniston is required to crush all barrels that leave the facility so they can't be used again.