The Army says the wait for new methods can't justify the risk of stored munitions.
For 50 years, the missiles have waited for the unthinkable. Wrapped inside concrete bunkers at the Anniston Army Depot, they have lain inert, packed with poison, propellant and an expectation of war.But they have raised more fear in their hometown than in the hearts of some unseen enemy. As the Army readies an incinerator at the Anniston Army Depot to burn and rid the planet of these lethal weapons, many residents question the plan's safety and the county's readiness.
The Army continues to stress the risk of continued storage, while incineration opponents say there is time to wait and find a solution better than burning the weapons.
"We don't have a science that can compare those two risks," said Dr. Matthew Meselson, a chemistry professor at Harvard and director of the Harvard Sussex Program, a chemical weapons think tank. "But once (the stockpile) is gone, it's gone."
Incineration opponents point to problems within the Army's program as reason to believe burning the weapons is more dangerous than continuing to keep them in concrete bunkers.
"It is an issue of concern, but it should not be a driving concern to force a community to accept a technology that emits poisons," said Craig Williams of the Kentucky-based anti-incineration Chemical Weapons Working Group.
The Army does not agree and says it is abiding by emissions standards set by the Centers for Disease Control and the Environmental Protection Agency.
Williams claims the Army has inflated the danger posed by the stockpile and said the Army can study and compare the risks between storage, incineration and alternative technologies.
"We've been asking for that (a comparative risk assessment) for years," he said.
Citing new studies that have shown the weapons to be twice as toxic as previously believed, opponents question the potential long-term health and environmental effects of burning and question the Army's credibility and veracity.
This week the Army's plans were called into question by a report from the Congressional Research Service (an arm of Congress that conducts independent research for legislators) that backed an estimated 2014 completion date for incineration in Anniston.
The Army has said it would complete its burning of chemical weapons in Anniston by 2007, the deadline for destroying all such arms, according to the terms of a disarmament treaty signed by the United States in 1997.
Incineration opponents, disarmament experts, and Army officials have come to the increasing realization that the United States can't meet that deadline, and some question whether the Army can dispose of the weapons by 2012 after a five-year treaty extension.
The stockpile's stability also resurfaced at the federal hearings, with Army officials saying the rockets would remain stable until 2043. After 2043, the chances of a weapon firing on its own will increase.
The developments leave anti-incineration opponents and residents alike to ask, "Why not wait for an alternative?"
Army officials stress the risk of continued storage and the possibility of a catastrophic event, such as an airplane crash or a lightning strike befalling one of the bunkers and blowing a cache of chemical weapons sky-high. The odds are slim, but the possibility is ever-present, said Lt. Col. Bruce Williams, the Army commander in charge of overseeing their storage.
Those chances are greater than the possibility of self-ignition of a rocket, which currently stands on the order of one in 100,000,000. It's too small a risk to appear on his pie charts detailing potential accidents.
In 2043, the risk of auto-ignition jumps to the level of one in 1,000,000. Although that also presents a minuscule risk, it adds another unneeded variable to the stockpile's safekeeping, Williams said.
However, leaking rockets pose a greater concern, and Anniston has 76 percent of the nation's leaking GB rockets with only 14 percent of the GB rocket stockpile. This week, workers found five new leakers in the bunker.
"We just have some bad lots," Williams said. Half of the leaking rockets come from one particular lot.
Leaking rockets are believed to be less stable. They also require additional handling, as they need to be removed from the bunker and repacked. That can require shuffling hundreds of other rockets inside the bunker during the process, Williams said.
But he still frets more over the possibility of an airplane crash or errant lightning bolt.
It may be a once-in-15,000-year event, Williams said, but he doesn't know if that could happen tomorrow or 15,000 years from now.
"If you wait until 2043, that's 42 years of accrued storage risk," he said.
Those who question the incineration program say those risks do not trump the problems they see with the incineration program as it now stands.
"Certainly I'm concerned about continued storage, but, as the program has marched forward, I'm deeply concerned about the incineration program and whether it should proceed," Calhoun County Commissioner Robert Downing said. He pointed to the lingering questions over the length of the incineration's operation, the level of protection for the community, and the toxicity of the agent.
Other incinerators, such as the one in Tooele, Utah, have experienced problems with failed warning sirens, accidental releases of nerve agent, and operator error.
"We've had human error before, and there's no reason to think we won't have human error here and in subsequent projects in other parts of the country," Downing said.
Fellow County Commissioner Eli Henderson, a former chemical weapons worker at the depot, said the stockpile does pose a threat; but he is unsure whether the Army is hyping the danger in order to gain popular approval for the incineration program.
"Initially I thought they were right," he said. "But not everything they've told me is the exact truth."
The Army's incinerator spokesman, Mike Abrams, said the Army only has one objective: "To safely eliminate the weapons as soon as possible."
The Army has more than local pressure to burn the weapons, said Jonathan Tucker, a disarmament expert at the Monterey Institute for International Studies in Washington, D.C.
Although Congress called for the destruction of our chemical weapons stockpiles in 1985, it also signed the international Chemical Weapons Convention Treaty of 1997, which declared that the world needed to be rid of category one chemical weapons, such as those found at the depot, by 2007.
The United States, Russia, South Korea and India all have category one chemical weapons, and all have begun their destruction, except for Russia.
If the United States doesn't attempt to meet its deadlines, "We will have a very hard time holding the Russians' feet to the fire," Tucker said. "The U.S. has not set a great example. We've done a lot of things to weaken the treaty already."
If we do not destroy our stockpiles, it may become more difficult to ensure that the other 174 treaty signatories won't make new weapons, presenting a renewed national security threat.
"I think they are pretty strong pressures," Tucker said.
Still, Abrams said, "I don't think the treaty is as important as eliminating the risk to the community."
The debate rages over what the risk actually is.
