Analysis
The phrase "maximum protection" has been bandied about for years by those in the thick of the interagency skirmishing over emergency preparations for the Anniston Army Depot's chemical stockpile or the incinerator built to destroy it.
The phrase is part of federal law. In tone at least, it sets a high standard for the level of preparations the Department of Defense must provide for the eight communities across the country with chemical weapons stockpiles.
But the standard the words create is as vague as it is lofty. It does not offer a precise definition or detailed prescription for the planning that must be done for the unlikely event of a chemical weapons accident.
Instead, maximum protection is defined in policy papers written in Washington offices without public scrutiny. As a result, the term is subject to interpretation and is fodder for conflict.
To the federal government, maximum protection means one thing. To Calhoun County officials, it's something completely different - something more expensive. And, as the past year's disputes over preparations have shown, it's a phrase, to paraphrase the bard, that has led to great sound and fury while signifying nothing.
But, with the legal action taken by Gov. Don Siegelman against the incinerator last week, the ambiguity surrounding maximum protection could soon recede.
If a judge finds for Siegelman, maximum protection would be defined as more than tone-alert radios and warning sirens, more than duct tape and plastic coverings for windows. A successful legal effort would bring protective respiratory hoods - essentially gas masks - into the homes of people living near the depot, and top-of-the-line protective equipment to first-responders.
Siegelman's lawsuit, which was filed Thursday in federal court in Birmingham, is based largely on the statute that obliges the federal government to protect communities near the stockpiles. But the lawsuit's reach goes beyond the law as written and delves into more than a year's worth of meetings and correspondence that records the wrangling that has tainted emergency preparations in Calhoun County.
In effect, Siegelman's lawyers throw the Defense Department's commitments, made during a series of meetings with federal, state and local officials last fall, back at it.
Rather than citing specific cases of legal precedent, the lawyers try to make the case that the federal officials in charge of preparing the community simply haven't done their jobs.
Appended to the legal documents are the letters written by Undersecretary of Defense Edward "Pete" Aldridge to various elected officials, including a breakdown of the $40.5 million funding package he ordered and a memo to an Army official asking that the funds be "obligated and executed within 30 days."
That memo was dated Nov. 2, 2001, and, despite county officials' skepticism, seemed something of a balm to the troubles that had long plagued the community's preparation for incineration. Disagreements with FEMA and the Army had led the county to limit its participation in planning meetings and exercises. The money ordered by Aldridge appeared to offer a road out of the impasse.
Yet, as fall slipped into winter, it became clear that the controversy was not dead. In December, FEMA, with the support of the Army, decided that several items Aldridge had agreed to should not be funded. The aspect of the move provoking the most outrage from local politicians was the agency's positions that safety concerns prevented FEMA from signing off on gas masks and the protective suits.
The governor and the county's congressional delegation pressured FEMA to reverse itself, but the agency remained firm. From there, it was but a stone's throw to the governor's lawsuit, which demands not only the protective equipment and software upgrades for the county's Emergency Operations Center, but also funds to protect county schools with over-pressurization systems.
There is no dollar figure attached to the lawsuit, which asks only for injunctive relief.
Different than other challenges to incinerators, here and in Tooele, Utah, Siegelman's lawsuit does not attack the incineration technology as such. It does ask for an environmental impact statement in light of a revised schedule for disposal of the weapons. Otherwise, the lawsuit is concerned with the outstanding emergency preparedness issues.
The governor has made it clear that he supports destruction of the weapons, a position that not even incineration opponents, who quarrel with the method, not the goal, oppose. The weapons, resting in earthen bunkers, provide a target for terrorists as well as the potential for natural accidents. But in seeking to delay incineration, Siegelman raises the stakes, casting doubt on whether the Army could begin disposal of the weapons without an emergency preparedness program in place.
In doing so, the governor could forestall the situation that offers the only non-controversial definition of maximum protection - the destruction of the depot's more than 2,200 tons of chemical weapons.
