Burning a Cold War Legacy

[thedrifter]

08-29-2003

Burning a Cold War Legacy



By Lonnie Shoultz



The Cold War between the United States and Soviet Union may have officially ended in 1991 with the emergence of a democratic Russia, but at a U.S. Army depot 60 miles from Birmingham, Ala., a dark legacy of that global military standoff has lived on.



For decades, a massive stockpile of 700,000 Cold War-era chemical weapons has rested in underground storage bunkers at the Anniston Army Depot, posing a potential hazard of immeasurable degree to the base and surrounding area as the aging munitions began deteriorating and leaking their deadly contents.



But after years of planning, environmental protests, legal challenges and other delays, the U.S. Army earlier this month finally began the process of destroying the 2,254 tons of chemical weapons. The lethal stocks include rockets, bombs, projectiles, mortars and mines filled with sarin, VX and mustard agent.



On Aug. 9, 2003, workers at the Anniston Chemical Agent Disposal Facility (ANCDF) loaded a 6-foot-long M-55 rocket containing 1.2 gallons of liquid sarin onto a conveyor belt that sent it into a sealed room. There, the deadly chemical agent was drained and the rocket chopped into eight pieces. The fragments then traveled into an 1,100-degree furnace, melting into slag that will be disposed at a hazardous waste landfill in western Alabama. The sarin was piped into a holding tank where it will be stored until enough liquid nerve agent is collected to burn in a large batch.



When the ANCDF facility reaches its full production rate, it will be able to destroy 40 rockets an hour, Army officials say. There are about 700 M-55 rockets stored at Anniston, comprising about one-tenth of one percent of the total CW stockpile there.



Both the United States and Russia emerged from the 46-year Cold War with millions of tons of these dangerous weapons. Washington and Moscow had strived for an agreement, first proposed in March 1962, to destroy the CW stockpiles. That accord languished through subsequent decades of conflict and d?tente, culminating in a formal, signed treaty on April 29 1997.



However, it was a combination of the complex construction permit review process, magnified by organized opposition from a number of environmental groups, that prolonged the development of the Anniston incinerator.



The Army has tried since the early 1980s to get clearance for the Anniston burn, part of a massive program to rid itself of about 5 million chemical munitions. Nationwide since 1990, the service has disposed of approximately 1.3 million of the weapons ? about 25 percent of the total ? with another 4 million still in storage at Army depots.



At Anniston, the service paid millions of dollars in ?impact funds? to equip and train civilian emergency ?first responders? in the local area. The military has been handing out protective hoods and other safety gear to many of the 35,000 people who live within nine miles of the incinerator, and is providing special ventilation equipment to local schools to keep out lethal fumes in case of an accident.



Still, everyone from legitimate environmentalists with genuine concerns, to shysters trying to hustle a few bucks, waged a prolonged guerilla war against the plant.



Environmentalists voiced concern that a mishap in the incineration process could spark a release of the deadly agents, threatening nearby communities. They also voiced concern that the disposal process itself will create a massive amount of hazardous chemical waste that poses a separate environmental threat.



One anecdotal story is that one of the groups that held up the Army withdrew their protest after the service paid them $40,000. It is difficult to confirm the details since there are no court records available, but the Army acknowledges paying them and the group used the money to build a Confederate Memorial. No official from either camp ever explained how that payoff would assuage the fears of the community regarding the burn.



The last legal challenge to the Anniston incinerator ended on Aug. 8, 2003, when the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeal in Atlanta removed a final court order halting the burning process. However, civilian opponents from the Sierra Club to civil rights leader Martin Luther King III have continued protesting the facility.



Supporters of the Army disposal plan say the service has already proven it can destroy the CW stockpile in a safe manner.



Anniston is not the U.S. Army?s first successful chemical weapons disposal project. A signal event in the disposal process came on Aug. 4, 2001, when its chemical disposal mission on Johnson Island Atoll in the Pacific closed after completing a project to incinerate more than 400,000 chemical munitions stored there over a period of thirty years. The burn disposed of 2,000 tons of nerve and blister agent.



While the drama continues to play out in Anniston, the Russian government reported that it needed an extension of its original deadline of 2001 for destruction of the first 1 percent of its chemical agent stockpile ? comprising 40,000 metric tons. Moscow claims to have the ability to complete 20 percent of the job by 2007 as long as the United States is prompt with its payments to support the Russian effort.



There is a final deadline of 2012 under the treaty for the complete destruction of all chemical weapons on both sides? stocks. The U.S. Army says it should finish the burn at Anniston by 2010, but critics say it may take another four years after that, until 2014. Russian officials have said that they can meet the treaty deadline with the one extension. Many weapons analysts consider the 2012 deadline to be unrealistic.



People under the age of thirty do not remember the darkest days of the Cold War. People over forty will never forget them. The lack of funds and the Russian distaste of any type of oversight is slowing the destruction of the world?s chemical weapons inventory, but each day allows a few more to be destroyed ? an overall positive development.



On the other hand, the two former rivals have had little success in forging a similar agreement on how to rid themselves of their equally-lethal stocks of biological weapons. That lethal Cold War legacy remains intact.



Lonnie Shoultz is a Contributing Editor of DefenseWatch. He can be reached at lshoultz@gulftel.com.

http://www.sftt.org/cgi-bin/csNews/c....5288620049349

Sempers,

Roger

[BLUEHAWK]

Roger -
Don't think me excessively ecstatic or anything, but your post is REALLY REALLY REALLY great news as far as I am concerned! More power to them, and let us accelerate the incineration!

It's the kind of information that oughta give even the MOST contrary conspiratorialist pause that, yes, there is a way to do these things, we know what that way is, and we're doing it.

By the by, I hope Tamaroa sees that part about $40k being used to put up a Confederate memorial... what a story within a story that is!

Oddly, your post also made me think about Iraq's wmd... I mean, if it took all that effort to destroy our own wmd, then it kinda argues in favor of those who have been worrying about Iraqi stockpiles, doesn't it? In other words, if their stuff WASN'T there, where in the frick did they put it? Dump it on the sand or something? Then I get to thinking about REAL environmental disasters, since Saddam's guys opened the oil pitcock into the Gulf in '91 and all... what if they poisoned the land itself, and what might that do to the people, our own now included, who drink that water and till that soil.

Thanks drifter...