Gov. Don Siegelman announced Friday that the state of Alabama will sue the federal government to prevent the start-up of the chemical weapons incinerator at the Anniston Army Depot. That is because the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Army have been playing games with our $40.5 million in funding for emergency preparedness.Until the feds provide the promised funding for measures such as gas masks and collective protection shelters, the governor vowed not to let the destruction of the chemical weapons begin.
Okay, here we go again. One more time from the top.
We have always needed emergency preparedness in Calhoun County. Forty years ago, when the Army first put those nefarious weapons in our backyard, we should have had emergency preparedness in the event of an accident. But we didn’t.
Not until the government began discussing the destruction of the weapons did it start talking about emergency preparedness for the communities around the weapons. Subsequently, Congress asked the Army to start the Chemical Stockpile (remember it’s stockpile, not incinerator) Emergency Preparedness Program.
This was unfortunate because it has since given everyone the impression that emergency preparedness was needed for the destruction process — in our case incineration of the weapons — not for the weapons we have lived with for years. And as Sept. 11 proved, we’ve needed those emergency preparations all along.
So now that we are ready to begin the destruction process, the governor is threatening to stop it until we have “maximum protection.” Of course, no one has defined what exactly constitutes “maximum protection.”
And the fact that these weapons will just continue to sit in our community and create a threat for even more time has not seemed to dawn on any of our decision-makers.
The governor is right to push for more emergency preparedness, as is the Calhoun County Commission. We have needed it, we do need it and we will need it. But stopping the Army from eliminating the source of the threat is not the way to go about it.
