Field Notes--Sierra Club
August 12, 2003

The Big Burn is On in Anniston, Alabama

Rally set for Saturday, Aug. 16 -- please come! Dr. Martin Luther King III to speak.

It's happening. The U.S. Army weapons disposal facility in Anniston, Alabama, has started incinerating rockets, land mines, and artillery shells that contain 2,000 tons of nerve agents and mustard gas.

Although there are safer means of carrying out this mission -- neutralization, for example -- and the surrounding community has launched protests, and a lawsuit has been filed to stop the incineration, the Army on Saturday sparked up the incinerator.

About 35,000 people live within nine miles of the plant; 110,00 live within 30 miles of the plant. The Anniston depot is the nation's first chemical-weapons incinerator located in a populated area. The facility contains about 6 or 7 percent of the country's chemical weapons and the Army estimates it will take about 7 years to burn the stockpile.

Surrounding the facility are neighorhoods housing mainly poor and minority families. Residents have been offered protective hoods, gas masks, and shelter kits.

What really alarms Sierra Club organizer Peggie Griffin, who lives 40 miles from the incinerator, is that the burning started before the Army completed a project to pressurize rooms at several nearby schools to serve as emergency shelters.

"The Army held a public meeting and one of the things they hammered into the audience is that they were going to do this safely, slowly, one step at a time, and that no accidents will happen," said Griffin. "Why, then, are they moving ahead with the burning when our children's schools are not yet safe?"

She also pointed out that because the schools are not yet pressurized, the Army said it won't burn during school hours, opting instead for mid-afternoon until dark.

"That's when many people are out driving around in their cars -- and how safe can that be?" Griffin asked.

The Sierra Club has held rallies at the gates of the Army depot and is among 21 groups that are plaintiffs in a lawsuit filed by the Chemical Weapons Working Group, a Kentucky-based organization. The suit charges that the government failed to comply with the National Environmental Protection Act by starting the incinerator without following proper procedures.

On August 8, U.S. District Court Judge T.P. Jackson denied a citizens' motion for a restraining order against the start-up of the incinerator, saying that evidence did not merit holding up the burn.

And so the burning began on August 9.

"We need help here in Anniston," said Griffin. "We need the help of activists and concerned citizens around the country. Please -- if you can -- join us for the march and rally on August 16, and at the very least call the White House and express your outrage. Demand justice through safe disposal of our own weapons of mass destruction."