ARSENAL BEGINS INCINERATION IN 2005 AFTER LONG WAIT

By Amy Riggin/THE COMMERCIAL STAFF
Friday, December 30, 2005 10:05 AM CST

EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the ninth in a series of articles on the top 10 news stories of 2005 as selected by the staff of the Pine Bluff Commercial.

On March 29, the Pine Bluff Arsenal made history by incinerating two M55 rockets filled with sarin nerve agent — the first step toward eliminating 12 percent of the nation’s chemical weapons stockpile stored there.

The long-awaited startup of chemical weapons incineration was selected by The Commercial news staff as the No. 2 story of the year.

During a press conference held that afternoon at Creasy Auditorium outside the arsenal gates, Col. Tom Woloszyn, then-commander of the aarsenal, said it was “a very historic day in the life of the Pine Bluff Arsenal” and that the startup was “just the beginning of a very successful operation.”

Randy Long, site project manager for the facility, said more than 11 million hours had been invested in constructing, testing and training to operate the $500 million facility.

Since operations began, seven fires have occurred at the chemical weapons disposal facility, the most recent on Dec. 20.

During four of the fires, including the Dec. 20 incident, rockets were being processed and the flames occurred while rockets were being cut into pieces. The other three fires that occurred during operations were on May 11, May 22 and Aug. 13.

Three other fires — on July 17, Nov. 12 and Nov. 29 — did not occur while rockets were being processed.

Arsenal officials say an explosive containment room in the facility is designed to contain any explosion and that fires are to be expected. Since the first fire, the addition of cooling sprays, increased maintenance operations and other actions have been taken to address the problem.

However, the cause of the fires remain under investigation by a task force formed by the Army’s Chemical Materials Agency.

“Fires definitely are expected because of the nature of the material that we’re dealing with,” said Raini Wright, spokeswoman for the disposal facility, in an interview after the Nov. 29 fire. “It’s energetic material so we do expect for those things to happen and we do expect for them to occur in the future. That’s why the facility is designed the way it is.”

She noted that there has not been a release of chemical agent during any of the fires and that systems have functioned as they were designed.

The arsenal originally declared 3,850 tons of agent — the country’s second largest stockpile — under the Chemical Weapons Convention treaty signed in 1997. Its inventory includes M55 rockets filled with sarin and VX nerve agents, VX land mines and ton containers filled with mustard agent.

Disposal of the sarin rockets will be followed by the VX rockets, VX land mines and mustard agent.

The nerve agents were brought here from other sites in the 1960s, while the mustard agent was shipped in during the 1940s. The weapons are being incinerated under the guidelines of the treaty, which set a deadline of 2012.

“Clearly, this is a major milestone in our progress to dispose of the United States chemical munitions stockpile,” said Dale Ormond, deputy assistant secretary of the Army (Elimination of Chemical Weapons), on the day operations began. “Today Pine Bluff starts down the road of making chemical weapons history.”

As of Monday, the disposal facility had incinerated 32,467 rockets containing 315,197 pounds of the nerve agent GB, or sarin.