BYNUM
Mike Noyes was on duty when the first M55 rocket and its load of nerve agent were destroyed in Tooele County, Utah - a desert place where some gave the same amount of attention to another hazardous waste incinerator as they would to a rainless day.
To be sure, that plant, the second of its kind, brought its share of controversy. The scene of a much-disputed release of chemical agent, the Tooele incinerator was the subject of lawsuits that failed to stop it and was a pawn in maneuvering between the local and federal governments over economic impact funding.
But all that is nothing compared with the political crucible that has forged Noyes's current workplace, the Anniston Chemical Disposal Facility, as the incinerator here is officially known.
The community around the incinerator is much larger than that of the dry stretches of Tooele. Therefore, some argue, much more is at stake. For more than a year, Calhoun County's congressional delegation and Alabama's governor have been bearing down on the $1 billion project, using safety concerns in the community around it as leverage against its startup.
Yet, as the plant gears up for the start of testing, Noyes, an ex-Navy man, and his co-workers, many of whom are also former military accustomed to their workplaces being scrutinized, aren't flinching.
"All we can do is the best job we can do out here," said Noyes, the shift plant manager. "Hopefully people will understand. Politics are politics."
Beginning today, that job is to prove to state and federal environmental regulators that the plant can stay within the parameters of its permit, both for the amount of agent it can destroy and for the amount of emissions it releases.
To prove that, the plant will burn non-hazardous liquids that the Environmental Protection Agency says are more difficult to destroy than the chemical agent itself.
Incinerator spokesman Mike Abrams likened the surrogate trial burns to a Final Four game, rather than a championship. But the men charged with overseeing the operation of the facility don't show the butterflies that can come with the spotlight. Eagerness to take another step in what many in the work force see as a noble cause overshadows any nervousness that might come from having to perform for the regulators.
"I've been here since construction really got going," said Rusty Davis, an employee for more than four years and a veteran of the Tooele plant. "There's a lot of confidence in this facility."
During the nine-day surrogate trial period, a federal judge is scheduled to hear arguments in a lawsuit recently filed by Gov. Don Siegelman seeking to stop the test burns until the federal government provides a number of protective measures for the community. A hearing is scheduled for Thursday in Birmingham.
Siegelman's office remains firm in its insistence that the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Army must provide the community with a number of protective items, including protective hoods. An aide was confident Friday that Siegelman's demands will be granted.
"He and the administration are hopeful and optimistic that the issue will be resolved before chemical weapons are incinerated," said Siegelman spokesman Rip Andrews.
The defendants have filed a motion asking the judge to postpone the hearing.
In the criticisms leveled against the federally funded emergency preparedness program, little is said about the safety of the incinerator itself. Instead, most objections to the technology come from anti-incineration activists who favor an alternative method of destruction despite the Army's assertions of the incinerator's safety.
Those who work in the Anniston facility echo the higher ranks on this. Safety comes first, they say. Otherwise they wouldn't have settled their families in communities near the depot. The workers cite operating histories at Tooele and at the first incinerator, on Johnston Atoll, in the Pacific.
"This is a proven technology," said Davis.
As evidence of the facility's safety culture, he and others point to a recent problem involving fiberglass-reinforced piping that delayed the beginning of the trial burns for almost two months.
During shakedown testing, some of pipes that carry fluid for the plant's pollution-abatement system failed. Some failures were catastrophic, where the pipes came completely apart. Others were small leaks.
No injuries resulted from the problem, but management shut down the operation while the entire pipe system was checked and repaired by incinerator employees. Any pipes that showed visible signs of leakage were fixed; in all, that was about 9 percent. The pipes also were re-tested by the manufacturer to ensure they can withstand more pressure than they'll need to during operations.
"We're going to that extra effort to prove, not just to management but to the people who have to work here, that safety is the number-one priority and we want to make the place safe," said Kenny Lauyans, a shift plant manager.
Though Lauyans and the others admit the setback was discouraging, they say lessons were learned both here and in other places. Representatives came in from other chemical weapons storage and incinerator sites to learn how to avoid similar problems.
"It's easy to say we lost months of progress - and we did - but there are other things we picked up," Noyes said.
