OXFORD
Opponents of chemical weapons incineration unveiled their new plan Monday for destroying the nation's stockpile of the lethal munitions following a weekend conference in Oxford.
Craig Williams, head of the Kentucky-based Chemical Weapons Working Group, said the solution for ridding stockpile sites of chemical weapons lies in disassembling the munitions and then chemically neutralizing the lethal nerve agent so that it can be safely stored or destroyed.
Incineration opponents said they would call on President Bush to convene a panel to study their idea in the next 60 days. Williams said they want the president to halt incineration while a panel of public health officials, military officials, environmental agencies, citizens and governors of the affected states review their proposal.
Army officials contacted Monday expressed a high level of skepticism at some aspects of the plan.
The proposal comes after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Those attacks heightened awareness about the present danger posed by the continued storage of chemical weapons in communities like Anniston.
The Anniston Army Depot has more than 661,000 chemical weapons including rockets, land mines artillery shells, mortar rounds and bulk containers that contain the nerve agents sarin and VX as well as mustard blister agent. An incinerator is scheduled to begin destroying the weapons in June 2002.
Williams and the Chemical Weapons Working Group oppose the incineration of chemical weapons, citing the potential for leaks of nerve agent and emissions. The anti-incineration activists say their new plan - reconfiguration, neutralization and restorage - is safer, quicker and cheaper.
"The scientific evidence shows that our approach is viable, it is safe, and it will significantly reduce the time these agents are exposed to the community," Williams said Monday. He cited a 1985 report from the Arthur D. Little consulting firm which detailed the cost and risk of disassembling M-55 rockets as well as a Department of Defense study on rocket reconfiguration released in 1991.
Disassembly also will meet the requirements of the 1987 Chemical Weapons Convention that required the United States to destroy its stockpile by 2007.
While incineration may last until 2011 and beyond, Williams said disassembling all of the munitions could be done within five to six years in a best-case scenario.
"This is if everything goes right," he said. "If the political will is there."
Included in that estimate is a three- to four-week approval for an environmental permit. In contrast, the incinerator took more than three years to receive approval from regulators at the Alabama Department of Environmental Management and the federal Environmental Protection Agency.
Williams said he did not know how many workers such a plant would require or the cost and equipment needed.
Lt. Col. Bruce Williams, who oversees the stockpile of chemical weapons at the Anniston Army Depot, said "This is a good thing that the Chemical Weapons Working Group is embracing the Army's belief that we need to move ahead, and it is no longer acceptable to continually store these weapons."
He said he doubted that even if a disassembly facility received a permit in less than a month, it would take more than five to six years to reconfigure all the munitions, from rockets to landmines.
"It does not appear as though they've put a lot of thought into doing that very hard work," Lt. Col. Williams said.
In the past six years, workers at the depot have reconfigured 350,000 artillery shells and mortar rounds. That involved removing the shells from a box that also contained an explosive charge. Workers placed the shells on a palette and returned them to storage.
"We weren't disassembling, we were just unpacking the propellant," he said.
Reconfiguring the M-55 rockets and other munitions is considerably slower and more dangerous, Lt. Col. Williams said. It requires taking apart a rocket and removing the explosives from their berth next to the chemical agent in the warhead.
"We have separated warheads, but the rate is extremely slow," Lt. Col. Williams said. He said he did not believe the rate exceeded 10 rockets in a day.
Citing the Arthur D. Little study, the Chemical Weapons Working Group estimates that reconfiguring the Anniston Army Depot's 78,374 M-55 rockets would take 261 days, not including neutralization of the nerve agent. That would be a disassembly rate of roughly 300 rockets a day.
