The rate of rocket destruction has accelerated at the Anniston chemical weapons incinerator, and no one is happier about it than those who work at the plant. For months now, operators and workers at the facility have been itching to “ramp up,” to increase processing to a rate that shows a more visible progress in destroying deadly GB nerve agent.Last week, the Environmental Protection Agency told officials at the Anniston incinerator that they could begin destroying the M55 rockets containing GB at a rate of as much as 25 per hour, roughly 75 percent of capacity. This means those who live in Calhoun County are that much closer to seeing the munitions containing GB and other poisonous chemicals gone from our midst.
As of midnight Tuesday, since the incinerator began operating last August, incinerator operators say the facility had disposed of more than 30,000 gallons of GB and more than 28,000 M55 rockets containing GB. That’s about 66 percent of the GB rockets and 32 percent of the original stored GB agent. Those numbers represent 138 tons of the 2,254 tons of the total stockpile, or roughly 6 percent.
All this is great news for this community, which has lived too many decades with this threat. The sooner the agent is destroyed the safer we will all be. And “ramping up” should do wonders for the morale of workers on the line; with greater repetition comes greater efficiency.
However, once more we call for success with safety as the priority. As efficient as the facility seems to be running these days, we would caution officials once again to take every step to keep safety first, even if it means throttling back on the rate of destruction, or, if necessary, down time.
To date, through 277 days of operation, the Anniston facility has performed at a more efficient rate than previous, sister facilities at Johnston Island and Tooele, Utah. Officials and workers here have learned from those operations, in terms of safety and efficiency, how better to do their jobs.
Let’s hope that sort of efficiency continues to be the norm, that safety continues to be the watchword, and that progress is made toward the ultimate goal of destruction of the entire stockpile.
