The Army was stuck fighting itself. While it tried to convince the public that incineration is less risky than continuing to store the chemical weapons, it built the destruction plant and planned for disaster.The National Academy of Sciences also said an accident at the incinerator would pale in comparison to an accident at the stockpile. But this offered little comfort to Calhoun County.
Even the program's title the Chemical Stockpile Emergency Preparedness Program the notion that it was the incinerator that had created the need for emergency preparedness for the wider community.
The community had to ask, if storage is so dangerous, why didn't we need emergency preparedness in 1961 when the Army brought the weapons to Calhoun County?
The Army had no good answer, other than that the Cold War had compelled secrecy regarding the depot's chemical weapons. The Army couldn't tell the community about hell's fury, sitting behind the fence line, just six or so miles from downtown.
The incinerator represented a change from the status quo, and the status quo never meant anything more than an occasional leaking rocket, safely repackaged and restored by depot workers.
No amount of engineering safeguards, on the other hand, could build confidence in the incinerator. It represented emissions, potential nerve agent releases and the movement of the weapons out of their "safe" hiding places.
The Army's operating record on Johnston Atoll in the Pacific and in the desert around Tooele, Utah, plagued by shutdowns and the occasional release of nerve agents, certainly didn't soothe public sentiment.
The first serious threat to delay incineration came in a letter from Gov. Don Siegelman to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld on April 24. That letter followed an April 18 letter from the Calhoun County Commission to the governor, in which the local officials outlined a safety checklist.
"No such destruction is acceptable until every feasible safety precaution has been met," Siegelman wrote to Rumsfeld. "The safety of our citizens living in and around Calhoun County must be secured before the plant opens. There is no alternative."
Siegelman's letter included 12 issues, such as 24-hour staffing for the Calhoun County Emergency Management Agency, more sirens and revised data on the toxicity of the nerve agent at the depot.
The most crucial element was the revised data on the toxicity of the nerve agent, then under review by the Environmental Protection Agency and the National Research Council.
It was not a specific review for Calhoun County but intended for national use. The study entailed reviewing the existing data on the nerve agents and devising a better estimate of their toxicity for the general public, not just soldiers in the field.
Without knowing the revised toxicity, county officials said, they could not plan because they would not know the lethal effect of a chemical plume, and therefore could not estimate the size of the impacted area or the amount of time the nerve agent could linger.
In the meantime, the Calhoun County Emergency Management Agency had effectively stopped its public education campaign, and it did not fully participate in the Army's annual emergency drill in March.
Mike Burney, director of the Calhoun County EMA, said he could not educate the public if the county didn't have all the resources it needed to implement a real emergency plan.
County officials stuck with evacuation as its primary plan a plan that studies said wouldn't work.
Meanwhile, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which administers the CSEP Program for the Army, tried to convince county officials of the value of sheltering in place.
Sheltering in place requires that residents take shelter in an interior room of the house, sealing the doors and windows using duct tape and plastic sheeting.
Although sheltering in place was accepted by surrounding counties, Calhoun County officials said it wouldn't work for the residents closest to the depot. They refused to accept it. Without revised toxicity data, the county said, it couldn't ascertain that sheltering in place would work.
Anti-incineration activist Rufus Kinney criticized sheltering in place in front of a Senate defense appropriations subcommittee on April 25, the day after Siegelman's initial letter.
Kinney testified alongside Calhoun County Commissioner Eli Henderson and fellow incineration opponent Brenda Lindell.
As Kinney and Ms. Lindell pushed the senators to stop the incinerator, Henderson pleaded for more money.
"If we cannot get the safety items funded, we reserve our right to take legal action to make sure the maximum-protection standard is met," Henderson said.
Refusing to accept sheltering in place, the commission had to seek another solution.
The it arrived at was a combination of evacuation and shelter in place, provided that the Army supply residents with gas masks, or protective hoods.
The commission's solution got a tepid response from federal officials, who viewed the masks as a political solution for commissioners who needed something tangible to show to their constituents.
Undoubtedly, the feds also were afraid of setting a precedent with the masks, as eight other stockpile sites across the country might ask for the same sort of thing.
Without the masks, the County Commission said, it could not protect residents. The commission continued to stall any public education efforts regarding what to do in the case of an accident at the stockpile. As the surrounding counties joined in an education campaign with FEMA, Calhoun County sat it out.
The need for public education became the most contentious issue between local and federal emergency officials. FEMA saw the problem as a major impediment to preparing the county for an emergency, while local officials argued that they could not educate without more information and resources.
As Alabama's congressional delegation and governor pressured the Department of Defense, the Calhoun County Commission began soliciting municipalities to join its cause. That effort fell flat in June, when the commissioners circulated a resolution for the local city councils to sign.
The resolution concluded with, "Be it further resolved that the City Council endorses and supports the County EMA's safety checklist and considers funding and implementation of the checklist to be absolutely necessary before any chemical weapons are destroyed at (the Anniston Army Depot)."
During a work session for the Anniston City Council, Calhoun County Commissioner Robert Downing asked the city to sign the resolution, arguing that the threat of delaying the incinerator was the county's only leverage to obtain additional resources.
The Army said it had no problem with the resolution, except for that implicit threat of stopping the destruction of the weapons. Lt. Col. Bruce Williams, commander of the chemical weapons stockpile, asked that the City Council not delay the "ultimate protection" (destruction of the stockpile) while seeking "maximum protection."
"A decision to defer is a decision to increase the risk to the community," Williams said. It was an idea that rarely was voiced by the general public until Sept. 11. Nonetheless, the Anniston City Council apparently agreed with Williams. It tabled the resolution, never to revisit it.
The Calhoun County Commission since has distanced itself from talk of delaying the incinerator, proclaiming that it doesn't have the power or the will to halt the project. It has not voiced an opinion on whether it would support such a move by more powerful politicians.
Beneath the battle over emergency preparedness lurked another fight. Among federal, state and some local officials, the Calhoun County Commission's attempt to obtain $70 million in impact fees tainted the debate over emergency preparedness.
Further blurring the line between emergency preparedness and impact fees, the Calhoun County Commission hired Washington lawyer and former Anniston resident David Springer to lobby legislators on Capitol Hill for the $70 million. Now Springer represents the county on all matters pertaining to chemical weapons and emergency preparedness.
Commissioners now chafe at the term "impact fees," saying the money is to be used for rebuilding roads and bridges for use as evacuation routes. Even if they received the $70 million, the county's emergency preparedness problem still would linger, they say.
In September, the Department of Defense released a report recommending against impact fees, arguing that the incinerator had a positive fiscal impact on the state, if not on the county.
That report did not receive the same attention as a study released by the General Accounting Office in August that said Calhoun County indeed was unprepared for an accident at the Anniston Army Depot.
The Calhoun County Commission held a press conference to proclaim that they were right. The GAO study faulted FEMA for not taking a more active role in leading the communities, while FEMA officials expressed frustration at Calhoun County's unwillingness to join its education campaign.
Siegelman followed the report with another letter to Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, saying that he could not support the incinerator's start until the federal government met the county's emergency preparedness needs.
Ken Joiner, the county administrator, read the letter at the press conference. Commissioners would not say whether they would support such a move by Siegelman and reiterated that they had no authority in the matter.
By this time, the first real attempt to resolve the preparedness problem was under way. Following Siegelman's first letter, Rumsfeld had directed his undersecretary, Edward "Pete" Aldridge, to create a panel and address the governor's 12-point checklist.
Aldridge directed an Operational Assessment Team composed of local, state and federal officials to return with a recommendation by December. After the events of Sept. 11, that deadline was accelerated to Oct. 30.
The County Commission missed the group's first meeting, in August, opting instead to attend a county commissioners convention in Point Clear. Springer, the commission's lawyer, and county EMA director Mike Burney also missed the first meeting.
The talks proved awkward as federal and state officials tried to decipher the commission's demands in its absence. Officials grumbled that the commissioners were not interested in cooperation as they couldn't be bothered to come to a forum to address their concerns.
The commission argued that the Department of Defense knew about the commissioners' convention and purposely had disregarded their schedule.
To the county commission, it was the latest in a long list of perceived slights.
The commissioners did attend the second meeting of the team, which followed the Sept. 11 attacks. The immediacy of the threat posed by the very existence of the stockpile and the lack of emergency preparedness problem became all too apparent as discussions now centered on immediate protection for the community.
As the county commission rehashed its 12 points, federal officials pressed the commissioners and Burney to do what they could in the meantime, such as starting a public education campaign. The meeting ended in consternation when the Calhoun County officials reiterated that, given the current resources, they could only tell the public to evacuate a near impossibility.
The third meeting proved equally fruitless. The same arguments over toxicity and funding threatened to derail the process, and the two commissioners who attended the meeting departed early.
The fourth and last meeting brought a breakthrough. Federal officials agreed to provide revised toxicity data and to request money for gas masks, 24-hour staffing, emergency sirens and planning for residents with special needs who might not be able to protect themselves in the event of an accident.
The total bill for the measures came to more than $50 million. Defense Undersecretary Aldridge offered to fund $40.5 million of that, and possibly more, depending on the cost of the gas masks.
That $40.5 million price tag may increase significantly when the county receives the revised toxicity data. The data may show a need to expand the size of the "pink zones" and therefore a need to protect more people, at a greater cost.
Use of the data may also make current protective plans inadequate. Buildings that now meet the protection criteria of one death every 2.5 million years may need additional measures to attain that level of protection. More residents with special needs may need special planning, and more homes may need tone-alert radios.
In the end, the county may have to push the federal government for more resources.
And if the politicians stall the incinerator until the county receives "maximum protection," the rockets will continue to sit in the bunkers a deadly cache of dormant threat and potential energy.
