Statement of Rufus Kinney, Families Concerned About Nerve Gas Incineration.
for U.S. Senate Appropriations Hearing. April 25. 2001

Mr. Chairman, Senator Shelbv, and Members of the Committee:

My name is Rufus Kinney and I am an Enialish instructor at Jacksonville State Universitv in Jacksonville, Alabama.

Mr. Chairman, I'd like to begin with a brief mention of the incinerator itself as it sits at the Anniston Army Depot, its construction virtually complete. The U.S. taxpayers have spent about $1 billion for a facility that was originally supposed to cost $350 million. That incinerator is not what was originally permitted by the Alabama Department of Environmental Management in June 1997. Systems at the plant, costing millions, have already been abandoned. This is a monumental waste of taxpayers' money. There is no data to show that this so-called state-of the art incinerator can safely destroy jelled rockets, yet jelled rockets compose 30% of the rockets stored in Anniston. The Army plans to stick the jelled rockets into the deactivation furnace, which was designed to be utilized for other purposes, and good luck! When jelled rockets are burned. the feed rate will go down from 40 per hour to I per hour, and that's about as inefficient as you can get. This of incinerator is demonstrably inefficient, out-of-date, a huge waste of money, and it has yet to become operational.

The two major areas of concern I have are first, safety, and second, the possible negative health effects on the people of Anniston and Calhoun County. and their children, of constant low-level emissions of poisons from the smokestack during routine operations of the incinerator.

Regarding safety, or emergency response. a November 1985 Congressional Directive (Public Law 99-145) relating to the chem weapons demilitarization program requires "maximum protection for the environment, the general public, and the personnel who are involved in the destruction of the lethal chemical agents and munitions." This mandate has been reaffirmed several times and has the force of law. But, on June 20, 2000 in Montgomery the Alabama Department of Environmental Management (ADEM) denied the incinerator permit appeal of Families Concerned about Nerve Gas Incineration and Serving Alabama's Future Environment.

One of the most important aspects of the appeal was its insistence on a strong, workable contingency plan in case of an accident at the incinerator, a plan that would insure the safety of our children.

In total contradiction of PL 99-145, cited above, ADEM's unconscionable action freed the Army of any legal requirements to respond in an emergency beyond simply advising residents to stay at home, close windows, and turn off central air. The Calhoun County Commissioners' meeting with Army representatives on June 14, 2000, which I attended, clearly affirmed that indeed the Army intends to do nothing more than the absolute minimum. Thirty-five thousand people live within a two-mile radius of the incinerator. Seventy-five thousand reside in the Immediate Response Zone, a radius of 9.2 miles. After spending $120 million of taxpayer money in Alabama on this program, here is your protection: duct tape and plastic. Lt. Col. Paula Lantzer said, "They seem a bit simplistic, but we've done studies and these are very effective shelters."

After ten years of telling us to evacuate in an emergency, at the last minute, and with construction on the incinerator 80% complete, ten years of emergency planning are thrown out the windowjust as the Army learned that ADEM will absolve it of any further responsibilities. Thanks, ADEM. Now we can sit in our homes and hold our breath in an emergency! The Alabama Department of Management is a disgrace.

Special assistant to the Secretary of the Army Denzel Fisher shocked everyone present at the Commissioners' meeting with the revelation that the Armv expects people will be exposed to agent, but likely won't die from it., at least at the time of the initial exposure. "Our objective is to have zero fatalities. That doesn't mean we won't have exposure," stated Fisher. In view of the nerve agent release at Tooele one month earlier, which we were guaranteed would never happen. could never happen, I suppose Fisher felt it would be best to be candid.

Personally, I wonder what it would be like for my children to be exposed, yet survive. What kind of pain and illnesses might they endure. and for how long and at what Cost emotionally and financially? And who would pay for their medical expenses?

There's more. For ten years the Army promised us that if we'd just let them build the incinerator they'd never attempt to bring in one ounce of additional stuff to bum in it. But in fact, just one month after they received ADEM's permit to build in June 1997, PMCD spokesperson Tim Garrett wrote a letter on U.S. Army stationery to ADEM secretly seeking permission to bring in off-site conventional and non-stockpile military munitions to bum in the incinerator. And he got a lovey-dovey response from Gerald Hardy of ADEM, a pure attempt to turn Anniston into a toxic dumping ground. This same Tim Garrett continues to smile in our faces while he tells us to trust the Army!

ADEM's damnable ruling also lets Washington Group International, or Westinghouse Anniston as it is known locally, off the hook. The incinerator permit appeal requested reasonable compensation from the contractor to victims of incinerator accidents, but ADEM disallowed it, without discussion. The total liability of the contractor has been set at one million dollars, the exact same amount as the liability insurance held by my home appliance repairman for his one-man company! Yet Washington International Group just announced it was not going to file its annual I0 K form. Their stock has taken a nosedive and they are on a credit watch.

This has left the Calhoun County EMA in a quandary. What kind of workable, coherent plan can they use now? And how can they carry out any kind of plan in view of the constant denials of their requests for funding, staffing, and materials?

Toxicity levels are underestimated and out-of-date. Thus, risk assessments can't validly be made by our local EMA.

The Calhoun County EMA originally requested that 1 3 buildings be over pressurized to use in an emergency. That number was reduced by the Army and FEMA to 37 and then to 9! And it includes only one school.

This is outrageous.. This is not maximum protection. It isn't protection at all--and through no fault of our county EMA or our county commissioners. It just won't work. It seems to me that when the U.S. Army chose to store these munitions on the edge of a large city instead of some place where no one lives, it was taking upon itself an obligation to be absolutely certain that no civilian resident ever be harmed by living in proximity to those munitions. Obviously the Arrny has utterly failed to carry out this responsibility.

My second major area of concern has to do with the possible negative health effects on the people, and their children, of constant low level emissions of poisons from the smokestack during routine operations of the incinerator. The stack emissions include PCB's; dioxins; furans; heavy metals including lead, mercury, arsenic; trace amounts of the nerve agents GB, HD/HT, and VX; and hundreds if not thousands of other poisons. This will impact our health directly and a large number of agribusinesses, mostly Tyson chicken farms and beef cattle farms, and a major food processing plant..

Anniston is a city that has already been visited by a great deal of poisoning over the years. As a result of the operations of a Monsanto (now Solutia) chemical plant in the same part of town as the incinerator, a plant that produced PCB's for several decades, Anniston is the most PC B -poisoned community in America. I am holding up the June 19,2000 issue of U.S. News and World Report whose cover story says. "Kids at Risk: New Evidence Points to a Link between Environmental Poisons and Learning Disabilities." This cover story focuses on Anniston, and explores the chemical poisoning of our children. Scientific studies now link environmental poisons with learning disabilities in America's children stemming from PCB poisoning. lead poisoning, pesticides and mercury poisoning.

Regarding Anniston in particular. the article reports that the Monsanto (Solutia) plant for decades "saturated west Anniston with polychlorinated biphenyls. PCBs have long been linked to cancer. More recently, however, researchers have discovered evidence tying the compounds to lack of coordination, diminished IQ, and poor memory among children." Anniston Has the highest level of PCB contamination in children ever tested!. Why in the name of sanity would the community with the nation's highest level of PCB poisoning have its children subjected to a constant flow of PCBs from an additional source?

Anniston has become what is known as a human sacrifice zone. A human sacrifice zone is a community that is deeply poisoned, has long been poisoned, can't seem to get itself cleaned up, and can only seem to attract poisoning industries. A human sacrifice zone is shunned by professional people and families with children. This is what caused Anniston to land at the bottom of the heap of American cities.

We're losing population. There is widespread poor health. Home and property values are plummeting. Anniston was the only major city in Alabama to lose population during the decade of the 1990s. Anniston is becoming an unhealthy place to live.

Don't do this to the children of Anniston.

I urge the U.S. Senate to pull back from this incineration program. and let advanced alternative technologies have every opportunity to show what they can do. Give ACWA full funding. We need technology that can do the job safely, with minimal risk to the community, and that will be a closed-loop system that by law can not release poisons into the community.

Senators, thank you for doing the right thing for the citizens of Alabama, especially for the children.