Moves are afoot to try to bring off a meeting next week in Washington that can either resolve our chemical weapons problem or make them worse.Some of the most important people in this matter, including the man at the Pentagon who is in charge of this issue, Undersecretary of State Pete Aldridge, will all be in attendance.
There is, therefore, a chance that in half an hour some problems that have been plaguing the effort to destroy the chemical weapons stockpile at the Anniston Army Depot for years can be solved.
The dominant problem is emergency preparedness. Our county commission has long been unhappy with many aspects of the emergency preparedness program and has refused to participate in a region-wide public information campaign.
Commissioners have asked for a number of things, ranging from protective hoods to more staffing, before they will join the region-wide campaign. What they want will not be cheap. Roughly the price tag for what the commission needs comes to around $30 million.
As this page has long argued, that is a lot of money but it is not too big a price to pay for the added safety to the community.
We hope, then, that if this meeting comes off that the people attending will agree to address the commission's needs quickly. Nothing would be better than to hear Under Secretary Aldridge say at the close of the meeting that the issues are going to be resolved, that he understands the concerns and sees fit to address the commission's needs.
Nothing would be worse than to hear him say that he needs to think about it, that he will come back in six weeks or six months with an answer. That would be disastrous.
Our community has suffered this issue long enough. We deserve to be told what to do in case of an accident at the depot, but we also deserve the extra protection the county commission is asking for.
Although the danger has always been there — meaning that we should have had an emergency preparedness plan in place years ago — with the startup date for the incinerator looming our eagerness to have a plan in place and the equipment on hand has reached a new urgency.
Let's hope for the good of the community that this meeting takes place and that some command decisions are made next week.
