Chem Weapons Burn Begins

Most people paid no attention Saturday when the Army fired up its first chemical weapons incinerator located near a residential area to destroy two Cold War-era rockets loaded with enough sarin nerve agent to wipe out a city.

Workers wearing protective gear loaded the 6½-foot-long rocket onto a conveyor belt and sent it into a sealed room, where it was drained of 1.2 gallons of the deadly chemical and chopped into eight pieces.

Those pieces were fed into an 1,100-degree furnace, producing slag that will be trucked to a hazardous waste landfill in western Alabama. The sarin was directed to a holding tank, to be held until there is enough to burn in a large batch, probably in late October.

Processing the first rocket took 36 minutes, slower than normal to make sure everything was working properly. "The operation was flawless," Army project manager Tim Garrett said.

"That rocket is history. This community is one rocket safer," incinerator spokesman Mike Abrams.

Workers dismantled a second rocket before calling it a day Saturday.

Just outside the incinerator gate, Roger Johnson didn't even bother to use his protective mask and safety gear while he cut grass at the county landfill.

"It's more dangerous going down I-20," the main highway through Anniston, Abrams said.

One protester showed up at the gate. Rufus Kinney of nearby Jacksonville said the Army should not have started before everyone had safety equipment.

A judge gave final clearance Friday for the $1 billion project, capping years of preparation and legal challenges. It's expected to take seven years to complete.

Opponents say incineration raises too great a risk near homes and schools - about 35,000 people live in the "pink zone" within 9 miles of the Army site, which is about 50 miles east of Alabama's most populous city, Birmingham.

The military contends incinerating the weapons is far safer than storing them.

Craig Williams, executive director of the Chemical Weapons Working Group, which filed for the restraining order the judge turned down, said it may take days to decide if the ruling will be appealed.

"It's a sad day for those in Anniston and for this nation when our government is unwilling to prevent U.S. citizens from exposure to toxic chemicals," Williams said.

Williams' group advocates another method of destruction called chemical neutralization, but the Army contends incineration is just as safe. About 7 percent of the nation's stockpile of Cold War-era chemical weapons is in Anniston.

The Army planned to destroy as many as 10 of the M-55 rockets this weekend at the Anniston Army Depot and slowly increase to a rate of 40 rockets an hour by next year.

The Army's other incinerators are in more remote locations: Johnston Atoll in the Pacific Ocean and in the desert near Tooele, Utah. Another incinerator is being tested at Pine Bluff Arsenal near Pine Bluff, Ark., a city of about 55,000, and is expected to begin burning chemical weapons late next year.

The military is still handing out protective hoods and other safety gear to many of the 35,000 people who live within nine miles of the Anniston incinerator, and some schools in the area have yet to be outfitted with special ventilation equipment designed to keep out lethal fumes in case of an accident.

Sharon McConathy on Friday took her granddaughter to pick up her safety gear - the hoods, which resemble gas masks, and plastic sheeting to seal up a room in her mobile home in the event of an accident.

"It's real scary," McConathy said. "I think they're putting everybody at risk."

Sarin, also known as "GB," is so deadly a drop on the skin can kill.

Abrams said the nerve agent VX and mustard gas also are stored at Anniston, but officials decided to begin with sarin rockets because nearly 800 of them are leaking.

Nearly 700,000 munitions weighing 2,254 tons have been stored at the depot for more than 40 years in earth-covered, concrete-reinforced bunkers.