It is a good idea to keep an eye on the happenings at the chemical weapons incinerator in Tooele, Utah.That facility is a lot like the one being built here in Anniston. So whatever happens there can give you a good idea of what is to be expected here in the coming years.
As it happens, Tooele has proven to be a good laboratory for the incinerator here. Officials there have had a number of problems, but those problems have resulted in changes and new procedures that would make the likelihood of the same trouble occurring here extremely unlikely.
In short, we are lucky that this facility came first. Now our incinerator should be safer for it.
There have also been some successes.
A big one occurred last week when officials in Utah announced that the last of the GB, also known as sarin gas, had been destroyed at the facility.
This is important because we have a lot of that material at the Anniston Army Depot and it is by far the most volatile and the most dangerous. This is the stuff that can be carried by the wind that can go for miles. Most of the other materials at the Depot are not nearly as unstable or unpredictable.
And that is why it is scheduled to be destroyed first. Get rid of the GB at the Depot and you have solved by far the biggest threat to the community.
Officials in Utah started destroying the GB there in 1996, but the facility is home to the largest stockpile of the gas in the nation. In fact it has more than 12 million pounds of it or twice as much as the eight other stockpiles in the nation.
That means that destruction of our GB should be completed a lot sooner. And that, of course, will be best for everyone.
