Birmingham News
August 14, 2003

Incinerator working again; second problem repaired

08/14/03
KATHERINE BOUMA
News staff writer

The chemical weapons incinerator in Anniston began burning rockets again Wednesday after a problem with an air pollution filter was discovered and repaired, an Army spokesman said.

The incinerator was working at a slightly higher rate of speed than over the weekend, when it destroyed only two to eight rockets a day, along with residual nerve agent in the weapons.

But operators were not working toward a goal of 40 rockets, as originally planned for the third day of operation, said Army spokesman Mike Abrams. Because it was a new crew's first day at work, they went more slowly, he said.

"We have taken off any sort of a schedule for the crews in their first days of actually processing rockets," he said. "If they can do 15, great. If they can do more than 15, great, but they are pretty much doing what they want to do."

The Army quit burning M55 rockets at the Anniston Army Depot after the weekend, to repair a hydraulic leak that affected several parts of the incinerator complex including the blade that slices the rockets into pieces, officials said earlier in the week.

Later, workers discovered a cooling motor in the pollution filter system was not working, Abrams said. It is believed to have been functioning while the incinerator was burning weapons on Saturday and Sunday, but it is not known when it broke down, he said.

"The system worked the entire time they were processing rockets at the facility," said Scott Hughes, a spokesman for the Alabama Department of Environmental Management.

The incinerator has a series of monitors and automatic cutoffs so that if the system had not been working, the incinerator would have shut down automatically, he said. The state has three engineers in Anniston who have been monitoring the incinerator 24 hours a day for more than two weeks.

The problem was discovered in a second set of carbon filters that were added to the incinerator's design after the Army operated incinerators in the Pacific Ocean and Utah. Abrams said the Army's tests of the system showed it could operate safely without the final bed of filters.

Craig Williams, executive director of the anti-burn group Chemical Weapons Working Group, said he agreed the incinerator probably could have functioned without the final filter system.

While the Army was burning only two to eight rockets a day and little sarin, the system was under no real stress, he said. "But it will be later."