August 10, 2003
By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN
ANNISTON, Ala., Aug. 9 — With the push of a button and a spurt of steam, the Army brought an end to years of legal wrangling today and began burning the first of millions of pounds of chemical weapons stored here.
The first M-55 rocket, after it was drained of the deadly nerve agent sarin, was chopped up into eight pieces and roasted in a 1,100-degree furnace, turning a cold war relic into a pile of ash.
"This is absolutely a gorgeous day," said Michael B. Abrams, a spokesman for the Anniston Chemical Agent Disposal Facility. "We're beginning the end of chemical weapons in Anniston."
Many residents were less enthusiastic. For six years, since construction began on a giant, $1 billion weapons incinerator, an alliance of local and national environmental groups has fought to block its use.
"We're very disappointed today," said David Christian, an Anniston architect who led protests. "They're putting poisons in the air and we may not know for years what the effects will be."
Army officials have said the process is completely safe, but just to make sure, Alabama officials issued protective hoods to residents living near the incinerator, which just made many people feel worse.
Environmental groups in many places, including Anniston, have been pressing the Army to find other ways to neutralize its stockpile of cold war weapons. More than 660,000 chemical weapons, packed with chemicals like VX gas, mustard gas and sarin, are stored here, in concrete bunkers known as igloos.
The environment groups said the Anniston area, along the I-20 corridor between Atlanta and Birmingham, was too heavily populated for an incinerator. About 250,000 people live within a 30-mile radius of the plant, many more than in the other places the Army has burned chemical weapons, like Tooele, Utah, and Johnston Atoll near Hawaii.
The Army's response was that it more dangerous to keep the aging, corroding weapons than to burn them. Hundreds of mortar rounds and M-55 rockets in the igloos are leaking, Army officials said.
The Army plans to destroy as many 10 rockets this weekend and work up to more than 900 a day.
Protesters asked a federal judge in Washington to issue an injunction, saying that safety plans had not been completed. But on Friday Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson of United States District Court ruled that there was no imminent harm and that the plant could begin destroying the weapons.
This morning, Army officials gathered under a tent near the incinerator to announce that the first rocket had been destroyed. There was nary a protester in sight. (Several said they did not have enough advance notice to get organized.)
"That rocket is now history," Mr. Abrams said. "This community is now one rocket safer."
He then added that there were tens of thousands of more rockets to go.
Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company