Birmingham Post-Herald
September 2, 2003

Gas burn begins
Some residents apprehensive, others say get it over with

By DANIEL CONNOLLY
BIRMINGHAM POST-HERALD

ANNISTON — On Sunday and early Monday the Army burned hundreds of gallons of deadly nerve agent in Anniston, finally bringing about what opponents of the chemical weapons incinerator had fought against for years.

But life appeared to be going on as normal in Anniston on Labor Day.

Some residents said they were glad to see the weapons burned; others expressed a fatalistic concern about the incineration.

"I'm worried but there's nothing I can do about it," said Gary Wilkerson, 55, who was finishing up a meal at Huddle House a few miles from the depot. "I'll live with it, I guess."

Though Wilkerson said he and his family members are worried, he hasn't picked up the protective hoods and other equipment available to those who live in the pink zone.

The pink zone is a six-mile radius surrounding the incinerator where people would be in danger if deadly gases were released.

"I guess I'm bad about procrastinating," he said. "I really wonder if it would really help. I always felt like it was something they threw at us — like the alarm system — to make us feel more secure," he said.

The Army built the $1 billion incinerator to destroy 2,254 tons of deadly chemical weapons that have been stored in Anniston since the 1960s. The United States agreed in an international treaty to destroy the weapons. Since Aug. 8, workers at the plant have been draining sarin nerve agent from rockets and chopping up the rockets before burning the pieces. About 900 rockets have been destroyed so far, said Michael B. Abrams, a spokesman for the Army.

For the first time Sunday and Monday morning, the poison itself was burned.

Workers burned about 530 gallons of deadly nerve agent between 1:55 p.m. Sunday and 5:30 a.m. Monday. It was less than the 800 gallons of the nerve agent the Army already has removed from rockets, he said. The rest will go back in storage.

"It's not a disappointment, not a failure that we didn't burn as much as we anticipated. We have said from the beginning that we will begin each new phase very slowly and deliberately," he said.

Across the road from the Huddle House, members of the Fraternal Order of Eagles were spending part of their Labor Day holiday socializing and playing bingo.

"We're not dead yet, and they told us they burned some gas," said Gene Owens, 58, the president of the organization.

Owens is an insurance agent who also worked for Centech, the contractor in charge of safety gear. He went door-to-door to urge people in the pink zone to pick up protective hoods and other safety equipment. Many don't want it, he said.

"We've lived around this stuff so long we've kind of gotten immune to it," Owens said. "A lot of people didn't care one way or the other. They said the government will do what's right. Others said they would get the equipment because they didn't know what would happen," he said.

For Owens, who said he lives about half a mile from the incinerator, the burning represents relief. "I'm glad it's being burned," he said as bingo players called out numbers at a nearby table. "I'd like to see it over with."

He said he's concerned about potential leaks — for example, if someone flew an airplane into the bunkers that house the weapons.
Recent days have not been without concerns. He said he had heard the whoops of alarm systems at the plant three times lately and had called the Calhoun County Emergency Management Agency.

Abrams, the Army spokesman, said the alarms did not represent any danger for the community.

Owens also was concerned about the long-term prospects for the area near the Army depot.

"You can't sell your house. You can forget that," he said. The area is also marred by PCB contamination from Monsanto and Solutia Inc. In July a class-action lawsuit against the company was settled for $700 million. Owens said his mother-in-law, who was playing bingo at a nearby table, was a plaintiff. "We got this settled, let's get this burned so this part of town can start growing," he said.

Club member Bill Chappell, 74, said the Army would do what it wanted. "If they want to do it, they'll do it. Unless they can prove it's deadly dangerous, you might as well hang it up," he said.

He said the burning needed to happen but he was concerned that the Army would bring in more chemical weapons to burn after the scheduled seven years for destroying Anniston's weapons is up. "They might sneak stuff in here in the middle of the night," he said, echoing a concern several people interviewed raised.

Abrams said the Army can't move chemical weapons around the country. "Federal and state law preclude us from doing that," he said.

Chappell said he didn't know if he lived in the pink zone or not. But he said he would figure out what to do once an emergency arose. "It's going to take a hell of a lot of poison gas or what have you to affect anyone," he said.

Abrams said the Army monitors what it releases into the air.

"We have chemical agent monitors in the exhaust stack," Abrams said. "We know for a fact that there is no chemical agent in the stack."

About 99.99 percent of the materials that come out of the stack are harmless materials such as steam and carbon dioxide, he said. Other materials are present at levels below that which would be hazardous, he said.

Craig Williams, director of the Chemical Weapons Working Group, which has fought incineration in court, said that's not true.

"We know that what's coming out of the stack is not harmless," he said. Even under the best conditions other chemical incineration plants emit dangerous chemicals such as mercury, arsenic and lead, he said.

The group plans to continue its legal battle with a motion next week in Birmingham, Williams said. The group is trying to have the burning stopped so that the plant can be retrofitted for chemical neutralization, a method used at other depot sites, which they say is safer.