Chemical & Engineering News
August 18, 2003

ARMY INCINERATOR FIRES UP:  Sarin-filled rockets are being destroyed in Anniston, Ala.

LOIS EMBER

After years of legal haggling, the Army's third incinerator to burn chemical weapons began destroying nerve-gas-filled rockets stored at Anniston, Ala., on Aug. 9. Unlike the other two incinerators located far from populated areas, the Anniston depot is within 30 miles of the homes of some 250,000 people.

A coalition of environmental and citizens groups had tried to block the incinerator's start-up, arguing in an emergency petition before the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia that residents "will suffer irreparable harm if the incinerator is allowed to operate." That petition was dismissed on Aug. 8 by Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson, who ruled that the coalition had failed to demonstrate an imminent--not a theoretical--danger.

Craig Williams, executive director of the Chemical Weapons Working Group, says Jackson "set a bar that is impossible to obtain until harm occurs--a classic 'Catch-22' situation." The coalition, of which CWWG is a part, is meeting to decide its next step.

With Jackson's ruling, the Army began destroying its more than 42,700 sarin-filled rockets, which it says pose the greatest risk to the community. At press time, 32 rockets had partially been destroyed. About 48 gal of liquid sarin drained from those rockets will not be burned until 800 gal are accumulated. Army spokesman Michael B. Abrams estimates that this will occur around the second week in September at the earliest.

Anniston stores roughly 7% of the nation's 31,000 tons of chemical weapons that treaty obligations require be destroyed by 2007. In addition to sarin-filled rockets, the depot also stores VX-filled rockets and artillery shells filled with mustard gas and nerve agents