Army's chemical weapon incinerator controversy

by An Alabama Reader

This article was reprinted from the February 22,1997 issue of the People's Weekly World. For subscription information see below. All rights reserved - may be used with PWW credits.

ANNISTON, Ala. - At the moment I'm active in the protests against the proposed army chemical weapons incinerator at Ft. McClellan in Anniston - about 20 miles, as the crow flies, from my home.

The whole issue is clouded in contradictions. To begin with the military has already contracted two civilian firms to oversee the project despite the fact that no permits have as yet been granted, as far as anyone I've talked to seems to know.

There has been a great deal of public outrage over this incineration facility. Only two people have spoken out in favor of the plan. One is a representative of Westinghouse, the firm contracted to build the facility; the other is in charge of oversight of the burnings.

Research into the possible - I would say probable - short- and long-term impact of releasing nerve agents into our environment is pitifully inadequate. There are two prototypes of the facility. One is on an atoll in the Pacific about 800 miles south of Hawaii and another, which has been operating since August of last year, is in Utah where the approximate population within the 15 mile "ground zero" is 1,500. Fifty thousand people live within 15 miles of the site in Anniston.

According to all of the experts this chemical weapons incinerator will devastate this area. Many of the businesses with the best paying jobs have already stated that they will relocate to other, safer areas if it is built. And, of course, they will take thousands of jobs with them.

This area simply cannot afford an additional loss of employment opportunities. Things were bad enough before the announcement that Ft. McClellan would close but since then things have gotten much worse. Now to add insult to injury, this comes along and takes away even more jobs.

Of course, we're getting no help from our senator, the (dis)honorable Richard Shelby. This could've been expected as Shelby was elected as a Democrat and, once elected, reregistered as a Republican. In any event, he could've helped to prevent this but instead chose to ignore the public outcry.

The permit to incinerate supposedly precludes transportation of the weapons from any outside stockpiles for disposal. Yet the other three states in which incinerators were to be built have refused to allow their construction and the official word from the federal government confirms that they won't.

What are we to believe will happen to the stockpiles of chemical weapons in those states? The representative from Westinghouse, in an effort to alleviate local concerns, has stated that many of these weapons were made before World War II and that there is a growing risk of leakage from their aging casings. (We've had three such "minor" accidents in the last year.) In fact, he also said that it is necessary to build the facilities soon so that the nerve agents, including mustard gas, can be disposed of before the situation worsens. The point is that the weapons stockpiles in the other states are just as old and just as in need of disposal as those here. Would you care to guess where they'll wind up?

The Westinghouse rep contradicted himself, saying that the permit won't even allow for transportation of the weapons stored at Ft. McClellan to the disposal facility, to be constructed at the site of another weapons dump about eight miles away. This was said in response to a reporter's question about the likelihood of the weapons in the other states being transferred here for disposal. Later he outlined numerous safety precautions that would be taken in transporting the agents to the disposal site. But the permit doesn't allow for any transportation.

This raises another question. If it's true that the permit doesn't grant permission to transport the weapons from Ft. McClellan to the incinerator what will happen to these? Will we be saddled with not one but two incinerators?

Whatever the case may be, we will have the only chemical weapons disposal facility east of the Mississippi River, which implies that all of these weapons will be brought here from all over the eastern U.S. whether we want them or not.

At least our electricity bill will go down. I mean, who needs a light to see in the dark when you already glow in the dark?