Chemical Weapons Working Group
PO Box 467, Berea, KY 40403
(859) 986-7565 fax: (859) 986-2695
<www.cwwg.org>
for more information:
Craig Williams: (859) 986-7565
Brenda Lindell: (256) 236-1496
Rev. N.Q. Reynolds: (256) 236-1061
Richard Condit: (202) 829-2444
for immediate release: Wednesday, September 3,
2003
CITIZENS APPEAL CLAIMS DISMISSED
IN BIRMINGHAM FEDERAL LAWSUIT TO STOP ALABAMA CHEMICAL WEAPONS INCINERATOR
Today, attorneys representing nine grassroots organizations
in Alabama and Georgia and three national groups, filed an appeal in the
United States District Court in Birmingham, raising again several claims
against the Army's chemical weapons incinerator in Anniston, Alabama.
Plaintiffs in the suit say that Judge Karon Owen Bowdre erred in July when
she dismissed three of the six counts contained in the lawsuit.
Plaintiff groups including Families Concerned About
Nerve Gas Incineration, the Calhoun County Chapter of the Southern Christian
Leadership Conference, Alabama Environmental Council, Coosa River Basin Initiative,
and the Chemical Weapons Working Group, originally filed the suit in November
2002. Amid growing public opposition and concern, the Army began
burning Anniston's portion of the U.S. government's obsolete stockpile of
chemical weapons on August 9, 2003.
In July, Judge Bowdre dismissed one count concerning
the Army's determination to use incineration at stockpile sites, including
Alabama, that have higher than average minority and low-income populations,
even though safer alternative disposal technologies are being used in more
affluent and predominantly white communities. This violates the Equal
Protection guarantee of the Fifth Amendment, according to the plaintiffs.
Bowdre dismissed this count based on a six year statute of limitations within
which to sue the United States "after the right of action first accrues,"
which she said began in 1988, the year the Army decided on incineration for
all stockpile sites.
Rev. N.Q. Reynolds, President of the Calhoun County
SCLC, pointed out that the decisions to abandon incineration only began in
1997, with the most recent decision on a non-incineration chemical weapons
disposal technology made in February 2003. He, and the other plaintiffs
believe the six-year clock, referenced by Judge Bowdre, should not have begun
until the pattern of discrimination fully manifested itself just this year.
"Kentucky's chemical weapons stockpiles are similar to Alabama's yet in Kentucky
they are getting a safer technology, and we continue to be the whipping boy,"
Reynolds said. "We don't believe the clock should start ticking around our
rights before the evidence it there to demonstrate they've been violated."
Rev. Henry Sterling, also of Anniston, agreed. "Toxic
chemicals don't discriminate, but it seems as though the Army does, when
it allows some communities the benefit of safer disposal methods, but not
ours," Sterling said. "Sure sounds like unequal protection to
me."
Bowdre also dismissed two counts in the plaintiff's
suit, regarding new information on the "imminent and substantial endangerment
to human health and the environment" posed by the incinerator.
Those counts deal with the Army's dangerous plan to burn fully agent loaded
GB rockets in a single furnace, rather than separate the agent from the explosives
and propellant; the Army's lack of adequate waste characterization;
the inadequate identification and quantification of chemical emissions; and,
the recent findings that the incinerators in the Pacific and Utah have discharged
unburned chemical agent in the incinerators waste products. Judge Bowdre
dismissed these counts saying they were "a collateral attack on the permit"
and therefore the Federal Court lacked jurisdiction to hear arguments on
these issues.
However, plaintiff attorney Richard Condit says that
Congress' intent, when it created the citizen suit provision in the Resource
Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA), was to allow citizens to challenge
just such circumstances and to insure the review of information that has
never before been scrutinized.
According to Condit, "This is exactly the type of situation
Congress envisioned would trigger the RCRA citizen suit provision, allowing
communities to protect themselves, and the federal court most certainly has
jurisdiction."
Pointing to the incinerator's on-again off-again operations
since August 9, Brenda Lindell of Families Concerned About Nerve Gas Incineration
said, "Right now, the Army is burning and there is no way of knowing exactly
what is going in the furnaces, or worse, what is coming out of the incinerator
smokestack. In that way our government has failed us. We hope
that the court won't fail us, by dismissing these important factors from
review."
Craig Williams, director of the Chemical Weapons Working
Group, an national grassroots organization promoting , "The Army's incineration
program is in violation of numerous federal laws intended to protect
the citizens of this country and the environment. We are simply asking
the court to uphold those laws, and give citizens -- all citizens, regardless
of what they look like or where they live -- the equal and maximum protection
they deserve."
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