She stepped to the microphone and swore she had seen a three-headed dog.Out on Pelham Range behind her Saks home, she had witnessed the strange beast lapping up green liquid. That was all the evidence she needed.
The Army was guilty of criminal misdeeds in storing mass quantities of nerve agent in chemical weapons at Anniston Army Depot. She was scared to death. And her witness back in the 1980s added to the overall zaniness of a local hearing-turned-protest about disposing of the threat.
Put aside the biological improbability of three heads. She set an hysterical tone for protesters ever since. They decry the nerve agent while also hindering Army attempts to get rid of it.
Protesters are college professors, intelligent citizens and one lovely lady who taps me on the shoulder in Grace Episcopal Church to admonish me about my own view: I think the best way to get over being scared is to eliminate the threat in the safest, fastest means at hand.
But a strange science informs my friends in the protest movement.
First they made up their minds against incineration. Then they set out to gather the facts that support their cause.
I can be skeptical about a three-headed dog while listening patiently to the witness. But I don’t observe the anti-incineration forces showing much patience or openness of mind with the real science that endorses burning.
The Star once exposed the Army for a smoke exercise at the former Fort McClellan. Our report showed an increase of respiratory ailments in downwind Anniston despite a general’s not very credible denial of responsibility.
So the paper set out two decades ago to decide for ourselves the truth about incineration. Along the way we forced the Pentagon to reveal the content and size of its stockpile, which it had revealed to the Soviets but not to our own community.
We peered into the belly of the incinerator beast in the Utah desert and on Johnston Atoll, so far out in the Pacific it’s more of a home to frigate birds than to people.
Finally we called on the National Academy of Science for advice. The Academy said simply this: Incineration is safer than continued storage of nerve agent.
In a return visit recently the Academy looked again and made the same pronouncement. The team leader said if he lived here, he’d rather trust our hybrid, third generation incinerator than wait four or five years for a new tech, never-been-tried alternative.
He could add that such a liquid-based disposal alternative preferred by protesters would occur on top of our precious water supply.
Yet it appears to a silent majority hereabouts the protest movement has the upper hand. They’ve grabbed the attention, despite their bad science. The three-headed dog lives!
No one wants to curb First Amendment Freedom of expression, just even it out some. The National Academy patiently looked at anti-incineration documents from the protest movement and as politely as possible concluded them to be “uninformed.”
Now it’s time for leaders to emerge from the silent side of the local debate. Balance the protest by siding with real science for swift, safe elimination of the stockpile. Start a private, non-profit advocacy named Light My Fire, Inc.
Let’s put the hounds to rest and end our chemical threat with a match.
— Chris Waddle, Executive Editor
