DISPOSAL METHOD HOT TOPIC

By Amy Riggin/OF THE COMMERCIAL STAFF

Fourth in a series.

Incineration of chemical weapons has been met with varying degrees of resistance from communities with stockpiles and has led to the development of alternative methods for disposal. It's the Army's "baseline technology" for destroying chemical weapons that is sparking the debate and the method that will be used at the Pine Bluff Arsenal, where disposal operations are expected to begin later this month.

One of the most well-known critics of incineration is Craig Williams, director of the Kentucky-based Chemical Weapons Working Group.

"Our coalition has always been adamantly supportive of disposing of these weapons of mass destruction that are stored in our neighborhoods," he said. "We just don't think burning them is the answer.

"We've been working on that with coalition members from all the sites, including Pine Bluff, for years and we've managed to get the technology turned around at four of the eight storage sites in the country. Unfortunately Pine Bluff is not one of them."

The incineration process was developed on Johnston Island in the South Pacific, about 800 miles southwest of Hawaii. In 2000 the Johnston Atoll Chemical Agent Disposal System became the first U.S. site to complete its chemical weapons disposal mission, reducing the overall stockpile by 6.6 percent. During a 14-year period, the facility destroyed more than 4 million pounds of nerve agents (sarin and VX) and mustard agent and then was dismantled.

The next incinerator was completed at Tooele, Utah, in 1993. The Deseret Chemical Depot there stores the largest amount of chemical weapons in the U.S., 45 percent of the total stockpile. Disposal of the agents there is about halfway complete.

In 2001 facilities were completed at Anniston, Ala., and Umatilla, Ore. Operations began in 2003 at Anniston, which has destroyed 13 percent of its chemical agents, and in 2004 at Umatilla, where 1 percent of agents have been destroyed.

The last incineration facility built in the U.S. is here at Pine Bluff and was completed in 2002.

Williams said the role of the CWWG and local opposition groups at incineration sites changed once it became clear after numerous challenges in court that they were fighting a losing battle.

"We have modified our approach in Utah and Alabama and Oregon," he said. "It's more of an oversight or watchdog kind of role now."

Williams said the CWWG now works to ensure that incineration facilities are operating as designed and in compliance with regulatory standards. The goal has become to minimize the environmental and public health impact of the emissions, he said.

"You can't say, 'Well that's not going to happen,' because it's going to happen," he said. "It's now a question of trying to force some accountability, transparency and oversight into the operation of the plants, which is not easy, because the only thing coming out of the incinerators on a regular basis are toxic emissions, not information."

Rufus Kinney, spokesman for Alabama-based Families Concerned About Nerve Gas Incineration, said that group has been largely inactive since Anniston's facility began incineration.

"We've done many things -- lawsuits, marches, public education -- and what we've discovered is that it's hard to beat the U.S. military industrial complex," he said. "Basically, once it started operations what was left of the opposition pretty much quieted down. ... Most people are living their lives exactly like they lived before the incinerator came in."

Kinney, who echoes what many incineration opponents argue, said facilities are typically located near populations with "less education, less affluence and less of an ability to oppose incineration."

"They are victims who don't know they are being victimized," he said.

At Umatilla, where operations began last year, a state court of appeals ruled last week that anti-incineration group GASP could challenge the continued destruction of weapons in a full court trial. The court denied a stay of operations and will allow destruction to continue during the proceedings.

Karyn Jones, director of GASP and a CWWG board member, said the group is excited and optimistic about the ruling.

"We don't want to stop destruction, we want to switch technologies," Jones said. "Over 60 percent (of the stockpile) is mustard gas, so neutralization really makes sense at our site."

But Umatilla Mayor David Trott, who also works at the Umatilla Chemical Depot as an emergency preparedness manager, said members of GASP are in the minority.

"The overwhelming majority of persons in all the local communities are very much in favor of the process that we're using," he said. "The people around here want (the chemical weapons) gone. ... The sooner the munitions are destroyed, the better it is for the community."

Jones said the suit was filed in 1997 and seeks to have the facility's operating permit revoked.

Although neutralization, a process in which agents are chemically mixed with water to destroy the chemical agent using hydrolysis, has been chosen as the preferred method of disposal at the other four stockpile sites, only one is actually operating. That site, Aberdeen Proving Ground at Maryland, announced last week that it had neutralized its last batch of mustard agent.

Maryland is the only other site besides Johnston Island to have eliminated its stockpile -- and the only site to use neutralization to do it. The only agent left there is in the form of residue left on the steel containers in which the agent was stored. The last remnants of that stockpile are scheduled to be removed by next winter.

Indiana is expected to start disposing of its stockpile using neutralization sometime this spring.

But at Colorado and Kentucky, neutralization disposal facilities are in the design stage and work has slowed while the Army is studying options to dispose of its entire stockpile by 2012, the deadline set by an international treaty. Those options could include transporting the weapons to other sites that have already begun operations, including Pine Bluff.