If the Pentagon gets its way, more than 2,600 tons of mustard agent stored at an Army base near Pueblo, Colo. will not meet a fiery end. Instead, Pueblo's World War II-era weaponry will be disassembled, diluted in water, and treated with microorganisms similar to those that decompose sewage.
Although the Pentagon has not made a final decision on the fate of the Pueblo stockpile, a high-ranking Defense Department official recently recommended this neutralization process for the weapons.
It's the latest in a flurry of moves that have drawn attention to incineration alternatives since December, when the Army restructured its chemical weapons disposal program.
Upon assuming oversight of the program, Assistant Secretary of the Army Mario Fiori announced accelerated neutralization programs for stockpiles in Maryland and Indiana. He has floated the idea of using a similar process to complement an incinerator in Oregon.
Though the Army has not backed away from incineration as its preferred method of destroying the stockpiles, incinerator opponents have cheered the trend toward alternatives, sensing a potential wavering in the long-held preference.
In Anniston, the plan is to burn, as it has been for years. There is no suggestion of an eleventh-hour change. Fiori was not available to comment for this story, but through a spokeswoman he expressed an intention to follow through with plans to burn the more than 2,200-ton chemical stockpile at the Anniston Army Depot
"(Dr. Fiori) does not foresee any changes to the Army's plans in Anniston," said the spokeswoman, Karen Baker.
Indeed, any change to a project into which the Army has poured hundreds of millions of dollars would come as a shock, especially since the facility is just months from startup, according to the Army's schedule. The incinerator could begin to test on nerve agent as early as Sept. 8, according to its project manager.
Underlying the Army's investment in incineration is an insistence that the method is the most appropriate for a diverse stockpile such as the one here.
Processes involving chemical neutralization may be right for caches of relatively simple containers of liquid agent, but only an incinerator can handle assembled weapons, with their propellant, explosives and metal parts, the Army says.
This is the story the Army has stuck to for years, but to anti-incineration activists, it's an account that's been somewhat undermined by the Pentagon's preference in Pueblo - the first time the military has elected to destroy assembled chemical munitions with a method other than incineration.
These activists have clamored for the development and application of alternative technologies they believe to be cleaner and safer than incineration, but they have been rebuffed on the grounds that such methods are not mature.
"The party line, that incineration is the only way, has been revealed to be a bunch of fluff," said David Christian, a local incinerator opponent. "There are other ways."
The Army has not conceded this for a stockpile as diverse as Anniston's. The Pueblo stockpile is composed of mustard agent contained in artillery rounds. The stockpile in Bynum is made up of mustard agent and the nerve agents VX and sarin contained in artillery rounds, rockets, land mines and ton containers.
The process the Pentagon selected for Colorado, neutralization followed by bio-treatment, has worked well on mustard, but not on nerve agent. In general, researchers have had a difficult time finding an effective secondary treatment for neutralized nerve agent, according to Bill Pehlivanian, deputy program manager for the research and development project Assembled Chemical Weapons Assessment.
One possible method, known as supercritical water oxidation, has run into trouble because the neutralized agent gnaws at the equipment.
"There's a tremendous amount of corrosion, a lot of change-outs of filters and equipment," Pehlivanian said. "The technology works, but the challenge is in keeping it operational for a long time."
Moreover, the M55 rockets kept in Anniston present challenges during disassembly that artillery shells do not. "The difficulty is in trying to disassemble them, because there's a rocket motor in there and they have a history of leaking," Pehlivanian said.
Asked whether the Pentagon's technological recommendation for Pueblo makes neutralization more viable for all the elements of Anniston's stockpile, Pehlivanian said, "It's not fair to make an apples to apples comparison at this point."
He said that moment could come years down the road, when the military systematizes a technology at the chemical stockpile in Kentucky, which contains blister and nerve agent in assembled weapons.
If an alternative technology is chosen there, he said, "We'll have a more broad application of an alternative across every agent and weapon system."
In the meantime, many questions surround these technologies, even for the technology that could be applied to the simpler stockpile. In Pueblo, the Pentagon's final decision is still waiting on a final environment impact statement. After that, the Army will be challenged with proving that the components of the chosen process can come together in a laboratory setting.
"In the pilot plant, we'll put them all together," Pehlivanian said. "Can the process be integrated in a large enough scale to destroy the stockpile?"
Incinerator opponents say it's worth waiting for the development of these processes.
"Alternative technologies hold promise to dispose of the weapons in a faster and safer way," said Calhoun County Commissioner Robert Downing.
For its part, the Army insists that the Anniston Army Depot facility can dispose of the weapons quickly and safely and rid the community of the risk of storing the aging stockpile. Storage, the Army says, presents a greater risk to the surrounding community than does disposal in the incinerator.
"In two-and-a-half or three years, we should be mostly done with our VX campaign and both of our rocket campaigns," said Mike Abrams, spokesman for the Annison Chemical Agent Disposal Facility, as the incinerator is officially known.
This schedule is based on the assumption that the program experiences no more delays. Downing says that's a big assumption.
"The important thing is not when you start, it's when you get finished," he said. "It was all supposed to be finished by now."
