We have limited options. We can either destroy the pestilent stockpile of chemical weapons at the Anniston Army Depot or we can sit on them.Let’s explore the second option first. What does waiting mean to the community? It means we have the weapons around longer, thereby putting Calhoun County at risk longer to an accident or, as Sept. 11 demonstrated, a terrorist attack. All are unlikely but must be considered when we are talking about weapons that could decimate us.
And why would we wait?
Opponents of incineration argue that waiting might bring an alternative technology that could destroy the weapons more safely. Waiting might give the alternatives more time to come along but there are no guarantees that if we waited, the technology would catch up. We could still end up using incineration.
None of the alternatives under consideration have shown that they can destroy our stockpile with its diversity of weapons and nerve agents. None have shown that they can work on such a large scale. None are benign processes. All of the alternatives produce hazardous waste.
That waste still needs evaluation, says the National Research Council, an independent research arm of Congress, composed of volunteer academics, scientists and public policy experts.
The NRC has said that none of the alternative technologies has been integrated into a full system and that “remains a major concern as a significant obstacle to full-scale implementation.”
It also is a concern for Mike Parker, the head of the Army program that researches alternative technologies. “There is always a risk when you proceed with something that has only been tested on paper,” he said last summer.
So on one hand, we have hypotheticals and on the other, we have a destruction plant that has been built, proved effective elsewhere and endorsed as safe and proven by the National Research Council.
From Harvard to the University of California, scientists have backed the National Research Council’s findings. They also have said it’s better to rid Calhoun County of the stockpile than continue to cling to hopes that something else may come along to destroy it.
Some say we should be worried about emissions of undetectable compounds and PCBs. As for PCBs, the Environmental Protection Agency has said it is the equivalent of three drops — enough to bring a shoebox full of dirt up to the cleanup threshold. As for undetectable emissions, they are just that — so small as to be undetectable. The incinerator exceeds the emissions guidelines set by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the EPA.
These opponents in Alabama and Kentucky, and there is not a Ph.D. in science among them, want us to wait for an alternative that is unproven, untested and has unknown waste. They want us to lengthen the amount of time we live with this lethal threat, for what?
As the NRC and dozens of scientists have said, and as anyone with common sense can see, an accident at the stockpile would dwarf an accident at the incinerator.
Right now, the only thing sitting between the stockpile and us are concrete bunkers, one-foot thick. Tests have shown that one rocket ignition can start a chain reaction, lighting off a stream of rockets. They can blast out of the bunker and scream off in every direction. At the Anniston Army Depot, we have M-55 rockets containing GB and VX, two of the deadliest chemicals known to man. Those rockets present the greatest threat to our community and, according to the Army, would be destroyed within the first two years of incineration.
The incinerator is within a bomb-proof building. It maintains negative air pressure to keep air from blowing outside. It has seven filters attached after the smokestack to catch any nerve agent if it is released. No other incinerator, not Johnston Atoll, not Tooele, Utah has included these filters.
The incinerator also has the advantage of having two predecessors from which to learn. Glitches at the other two facilities have been addressed and fixed. The process has been improved.
We have a facility that the National Research Council says is safe, that has received the approval of scientists across the country and that is ready to begin destroying 2,253 tons of nerve agents this fall.
Dozens of Ph.D.s say it’s ready to destroy the weapons. It’s time we listen to them and remove the toxic presence from our midst.
