Army’s Plans for Nerve Gas Incinerator Spark Concern : Weapons: Fears about Alabama base’s facility have turned some friendly neighbors into angry activists.

The folks here have always been friends with their military neighbors.

God-fearing and patriotic, this quiet corner of the Deep South, halfway between Atlanta and Birmingham, Ala., is proud to be home to Ft. McClellan and the Anniston Army Depot, the area’s largest employer. In fact, the facilities are here because private citizens collected $130,000 during World War I and bought land for troops to have a place to train.

Testimony to Anniston’s abiding affection for the military can be seen in the center of town, which is graced with six monuments to the veterans of every conflict from the Civil War to the Vietnam War.

But trust and goodwill have suffered in recent months as locals have begun to learn more about what the Army has been storing for decades in concrete, earth-covered igloos. Anniston, a pleasant community on the edge of the Appalachian Mountains, is one of eight sites in the United States that are home to an estimated 70 million pounds of lethal but obsolete chemical weapons.

Anniston’s stockpile of rockets, mortars, land mines and aging, corroding containers of nerve gas and mustard gas represents 7% of the U.S. total. If released by a catastrophe, such as an earthquake or plane crash, it is enough to kill 2,000 people and cause injuries to 60,000 people over an 18-mile area.

“We’re in the kill zone right now,” said Brenda Lindell, who lives about seven miles from the depot. “If you have an accident out there it’s not an ‘oops’--it’s a real ugly situation.”

The presence of the deadly stash was never a secret. In fact, for years the Army has invited groups of business people and civic leaders to the depot for tours and to reassure them that everything was all right. For years the business people and civic leaders have believed them. No one made a fuss.

But now, as the Army prepares to build an incinerator to destroy the weapons--one of eight such facilities to be built around the country by the end of the decade at a projected cost of almost $8 billion--nascent opposition has formed.

It is not that local people want the material to remain in their midst--they don’t. But many dread what might happen during the disposal process.

Fears of a catastrophic accident have sparked opposition so fierce in some parts of the country that Kentucky and Indiana have passed laws that may effectively kill plans to build incinerators there. Maryland is considering an even more stringent law, and opposition is building in all eight states where the material is stored. But here in one of the most populous areas where chemical weapons are to be destroyed, everything had been relatively quiet--until now.

“Very few people knew what was going on,” said Vickie Talbert, a local businesswoman who organized the group Families Concerned About Nerve Gas Incineration. “Basically this has been a very patriotic part of the country, and we all want to believe our government.”

In recent months, however, housewives have begun learning about VX and GB chemical agents and M55 rockets. Business people and blue-collar workers, braving the resentment of a conservative and pro-military majority, are starting to organize. And children who ordinarily would be focused on catcher’s mitts, toys and television are being exposed at a tender age to the possibility of death by nerve gas.

The Cold War may be over, but for some people here, as well as in parts of Kentucky, Indiana, Maryland, Colorado, Utah, Arkansas and Oregon, the new fear of the United States’ own aging arsenal seems as great as the old fear of nuclear annihilation by the Soviets ever was.

Lindell, for instance, said she is concerned about the psychological effects of gas masks and sirens on her three children. It seemed an incongruous subject to talk about as she sat comfortably in her wood-paneled den while her daughter played outside.

The United States has maintained a stockpile of chemical weapons as a deterrent since World War I. In the 1950s and 1960s, as the weapons became obsolete, they routinely were buried at sea or burned in pits. These practices were halted in 1970 because they no longer were considered environmentally safe. Now some of the weapons in the stockpile are 47 years old and some chemical-filled rockets have begun to leak.

Congress in 1985 ordered the weapons destroyed, and no one seems to disagree. The question is, how?

In 1991, after the Army’s incineration plan was well under way, the Greenpeace organization published a report that argued that the government should explore chemical or biological detoxification methods.

The Army asked the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences to evaluate alternative methods. Their report is expected in early 1993. The Army’s position, however, is that the alternative technologies need to be further developed before they become viable. It is moving ahead with its incineration plans.

Susan Livingstone, assistant secretary of the Army, told a House subcommittee last April that continued storage poses a potentially far greater hazard than incineration. But those who question the safety of incineration say things are moving too fast.

“It just seems to me there’s this incredible steamroller here that’s trying to get this thing built in a hurry,” Talbert said.

Similar concerns are voiced by Brooks Clark. A member of the fledgling organization that is calling for more study, Clark is an investment adviser and chairman of the board of a local bank. He served in military intelligence in Vietnam. In his starched white shirts, suspenders and horn-rimmed glasses, he is an unlikely radical.

“We’re not saying don’t build (the incinerator),” he said. “We’re just saying: ‘Wait, slow down. Have you fully explored other technologies, other solutions? Have you fully considered the risks, and have you fully informed the citizens of the risks.’ ”

In Kentucky, where 1.6% of the U.S. stockpile is stored at the Lexington-Blue Grass Army Depot near Lexington, citizens began organizing eight years ago and now have numerous state officials and political and citizen groups on their side. A congressional report on alternative disposal methods says the Army itself is partly to blame for the mistrust about the weapons.

The Army moved the weapons to the Kentucky site in the 1950s but waited a decade before informing the public. “This led to the impression that the Army had ‘sneaked’ chemical weapons into the area without any regard for the safety of citizens who lived nearby,” the report said.

In all areas of the country where the incineration is being opposed, opposition groups have had to overcome the perception that they were anti-military, said Craig Williams, executive director of the Kentucky Environmental Foundation.

Nowhere have pro-military feelings been as great as in Anniston, which got its chemical weapons in the 1960s and where local officials today all either support the incineration plan or have not taken a stand.

Of paramount concern to Clark and others who are asking questions is the possibility that opposition to incinerators will be so great in places like Kentucky, Indiana and Maryland that the Army will end up trucking chemical weapons from those states to Anniston.

They fear that their county, home to 126,000 people, could become the central disposal facility for the eastern United States.

At one time the Army considered just such a plan, building only two incinerators, one in Anniston, the other in Tooele, Utah. Another proposal had the government building only one incinerator in Utah, where 42% of the weapons are stored. After two years of study, however--and after often bitter opposition to transporting the dangerous material cross-country--it was decided to dispose of the weapons where they are stored.

The Army says the risk of harmful amounts of toxic gases escaping during the incineration process is infinitesimal.

It contends that it safely incinerated 6 million pounds of mustard gas at the Rocky Mountain Arsenal near Denver in the 1970s using different technology and that a pilot facility in Utah has destroyed more than 336,000 pounds of chemical agents and 39,000 munitions by incineration. In addition, it says incinerators on Johnston Atoll in the Pacific Ocean have safely destroyed 21,500 M55 rockets and more than 200,000 pounds of chemical agents since 1990.

Small amounts of chemical agents were inadvertently released into the atmosphere at the Johnston Atoll facility, the Army acknowledges, but it maintains it was in such minute traces that it was of no public health significance.

Nevertheless, Anniston emergency management officials are drawing plans to erect warning sirens throughout the county and to issue tone-alert radios to every home and business. Buildings near the disposal site will be pressurized to keep toxic gas from seeping in, and officials are considering issuing gas masks to every man, woman and child within a nine-mile radius of the depot.

Still, not everyone here is worried.

“I have no reservations about it,” said Bill Andrews, a local businessman who, as a member of the Chamber of Commerce’s military affairs committee, organizes tours of the Army depot and has discussed incineration with depot officers.

“My daughter and granddaughter live here in the community,” he said. “I’m already leaving them a $4-trillion national debt. I don’t envision leaving them with a situation like this unless I’m convinced it’s a safe method.”

Of greater concern to him, and many other business and civic leaders, is the possibility that Ft. McClellan could be closed. A year ago, local leaders won a fight to get the base removed from the Pentagon’s base-closure list, but that is no guarantee that it won’t be put back on. Now is not the time, many here feel, for locals to oppose military operations.

Opposing the incinerator, Andrews said, is “just delaying the inevitable. And (the weapons) are getting more dangerous as time goes by.”

Although some site work has begun for the incinerator, work on the device itself isn’t scheduled to start until next year. It is scheduled to be completed in 1996.

However, Michael Williams, demilitarization officer at the Anniston Army Depot, notes that the project isn’t a done deal. “Congress can always change its mind,” he said. “Nothing is ever final.”

That is what Talbert’s organization is counting on. They are starting a letter-writing campaign to members of Congress and local politicians. Only a few months ago, barely a dozen people attended the organization’s meetings. But interest is blossoming. Almost 500 people attended a meeting in June. Now the group has set an ambitious goal of collecting 10,000 signatures by Sept. 30 on petitions calling for further study of the plan.

Said Clark: “You get involved in your family and church and in running your business, and you try to absorb everything you can from the Atlanta Constitution and our own Anniston newspaper, and sometimes you get overloaded. Then something of this importance pops up and you realize that they are four or five years down the road already. You suddenly wake up and you say, ‘Wait a minute. What the hell is going on around here?’ ”