OK, here’s what we know: The military plans to fly tons of PCB-laced equipment from the Pacific to Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery. Then it plans to truck the stuff to Pell City.And when is this scheduled to happen? Thursday. And when did the people of Pell City and the surrounding area find about it? Sunday.
That’s not much time to figure out exactly what is going on here. But that’s the military for you.
In fact, the addle-brains at the Pentagon didn’t even bother to tell public officials about these pending shipments. It was only when reporters Jason Landers and Sara Clemence from this newspaper started making inquiries that anyone in the military bothered to tell any of the local or state officials.
So here we have tons of PCBs being shipped all the way across the globe and then trucked through Alabama and no one knew about it, not the mayor of Pell City, not the county commissioners, not the governor, not our senators, not our congressmen.
Who, prey tell, do these military yahoos think they are? A bunch of truth telling, stand-up dudes if you believe Jack Hooper, a spokesman for the Defense Logistics Agency. According to Mr. Hooper, a mention of the shipments in the Federal Registry and postings on the agency’s Web site is plenty enough public notice.
That’s a bunch of garbage if there ever was any. Mr. Hooper and the other members of the fellowship of the silent ones must think Alabama an easy target.
The disposal planners must have been sitting around the Pentagon casting about for a place to send the stuff after Japanese citizens insisted the military get it out of Japan. They tried to slip it into Canada but our friends up north wouldn’t have that. Then they tried to get it into Washington state, but folks in Seattle put an end to that. So now the strategists are giving it a go in Alabama.
After all, we are already home to a huge stockpile of chemical weapons and a cocktail of pollutants including PCBs. What harm will a few more tons of the stuff do, the thinking surely goes.
But we are dealing with our PCB problem, thank you very much. And the stockpile has been here for years and is leaky and corroding. We have no choice but to burn it.
This load of toxic material is coming in from way on the other side of the world. There are plenty of other places between here and there that would make for a better disposal site.
The authorities tell us that if the PCBs are incinerated at Pell City the emissions would be below the level acceptable by the Environmental Protection Agency.
That’s nice. But it’s not really the point is it?
The point is that this whole thing is shrouded in secrecy and that is not fair to anyone around here.
We’ll state the obvious: It appears that the military is trying to pull one over on us.
Here’s a suggestion: Take the stuff to Wake Island in the Pacific instead. This tiny atoll is already home to a chunk of the PCB laced equipment in question. Why not dispose of it there?
That makes a whole lot of sense to us. But perhaps that is just exactly why the military isn’t considering it.
