Speak Out

Re "Which deal to honor? The incinerator agreement" (Editorial, July 5):

I would suggest The Star and its readers check out the anti-chemical weapons transportation editorial in the Salt Lake City Tribune published on the same day that The Star editorialized against weapons transport. (It can be seen at www.sltrib.com/opinion/ci_9794774.)

I am pleased that both editorials made the same point: "Don't send any more chemical weapons to our state." Such a position is most prudent.

The Pentagon's recent report that lists transportation of chemical weapons across state lines as an option to be considered is not only a stupid idea but it's illegal, and I applaud both papers for railing against such absurdity.

However, The Star wasn't content to make that valid observation. It also had to try to persuade its readers and the world that the solution for speeding weapons destruction would be to build more incinerators. The Star wrote, "Anniston has proved that incineration works" and, "[t]he Army has not built enough incinerators at other locations."

Such advice serves no one well, as it is a proven fact that incineration is a dirty technology — with the Anniston burner emitting toxic chemicals every day, some whose toxicity is well-known and others whose toxic risks have never been studied.

What the long-term effects of such chronic toxic exposure (at any concentration) on a population already burdened from poisons from Monsanto and other polluters, no one knows for sure. What we do know is it can't be good.

For The Star to go out of its way to extol incineration in an editorial about weapons transportation is obviously part of its usual and unsupportable defense of a technology that is outdated and is being supplanted by safer and more efficient alternatives world wide.

In contrast, the Salt Lake City Tribune was more judicious with its comments about the reality of incineration, saying that Utahns have "gritted their teeth as the nerve agents were burned hoping that the Army was right and that no chemicals escaped the incinerator stack except at levels that do not endanger our health."

Four of the eight U.S. chemical weapons storage sites rejected incineration. Please do all of us a favor and quit trying to convince us that The Star's undying allegiance to burning is justified; it's not. Furthermore, claiming to know that such a smokestack approach is best for other communities is just plain arrogant.

Craig Williams is director of the Chemical Weapons Working Group in Berea, Ky.