Few in Ozarks Unnerved by Toxic Training

The Army plans to produce poison here in the gentle green folds of the Ozarks--poison so deadly, a single drop kills.

Behind walls of concrete 14 inches thick, scientists will blend compounds under pressure and heat. The result of their alchemy: nerve gas.

The neighbors, for the most part, are thrilled.

Under international treaty, the U.S. must destroy its existing chemical weapons by 2007. But it can manufacture small amounts of fresh nerve gas for research. A Maryland lab makes enough to test protective gear. And Ft. Leonard Wood will make enough to test soldiers.

When it opens this summer, the Chemical Defense Training Facility will deliberately expose soldiers to VX and sarin, among the most lethal of chemical weapons.

Suited up in 15 pounds of protective, charcoal-lined fatigues, the students who chose this specialty will learn how to detect, identify and neutralize poison gas, be it on enemy warheads or a terrorist’s truck. The Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps and National Guard will all send students, as will foreign allies such as Germany.

“We want to create chemical veterans, folks who understand the nature of chemical weapons,” said Maj. George Heib, who directs the facility.

“Terrorists are getting smarter,” Maj. Ed Nagel added. “It’s very, very easy for them to get the stuff they need to create either a biological or a chemical weapon. This is where we get trained in how to respond . . . to weapons that could be made by the average Joe.”

Alabama Base Ordered Shut

The Army conducted similar training at Alabama’s Ft. McClellan for years until Congress ordered that base shut down to save money. Eager for more jobs in the sagging Ozark foothills, Missouri politicians lobbied for Ft. McClellan’s programs to be transferred here.

The campaign worked. Ft. Leonard Wood landed both the military police academy and the chemical school that had been based at Ft. McClellan. It also earned the job of coordinating the Pentagon’s new Homeland Defense initiative, which responds to terrorist threats with National Guard teams trained here to defend against chemical, biological and nuclear weapons.

International treaty prevents Ft. Leonard Wood from exposing its students to live biological agents, such as anthrax. But under the Chemical Weapons Convention, the base is allowed to mix a total of one liter a year of VX and sarin for training.

Both chemicals scramble the central nervous system, causing every muscle to twitch uncontrollably. Both can kill a healthy adult within minutes. And both are popular weapons. A Japanese religious cult chose sarin to attack the Tokyo subway in 1995, killing 12 people and injuring thousands. And United Nations inspectors last year found proof that Iraq had armed its missiles with VX before the 1991 Persian Gulf War.

Living next door to such lethal brews gives a few Ozark residents the jitters.

“It bothers me,” said Cynthia Cobb, who owns a cafe just outside Ft. Leonard Wood. “They had better know what they’re doing.”

Most of her neighbors, however, have long since brushed aside such fears. Their region always has been “completely dependent on the post for its existence,” Chamber of Commerce President Tom Mills said. So they think of the chemical school mainly in terms of the 4,000 students it will bring here each year. The extra traffic, they reckon, will translate into more burgers ordered, more boats rented, more gasoline sold.

And that’s good news for this beautiful but struggling region, which boasts stunning caves and rivers but also lonely little towns strung out along the interstate in a faltering attempt to lure tourists.

Melva Perrine, a 68-year-old Ozark native, echoed general sentiment about the chemical school when she said with a shrug: “It’s fine with me. It’ll build up the area.”

Already, Ft. Leonard Wood’s $220-million expansion has induced several big-name chains, such as Popeye’s Chicken and Red Roof Inn, to move into this patch of south-central Missouri, Mills said with pride. As for the risks? Mills recently toured the chemical school, with its trailer-sized air filters and thick double walls, and pronounced its safeguards reassuring. “We stand more chance of biting it while driving home from work” than from an accident at the base, he concluded.

Indeed, Army officials emphasize again and again that the chemical school never had a leak, a spill or a casualty in its 12 years at Ft. McClellan. The worst that’s ever happened, officials say, is a soldier collapsing from heat.

Reassured by that track record, “I’m not worried,” declared Bob Knight, mayor of neighboring Waynesville.

“Maybe I’m naive,” said Glenda Adams, a 43-year-old cook at the Waffle House, “but I’m pretty sure they know what they’re doing.”

The two-day training course at Ft. Leonard Wood will start with students learning how to don protective gear, shed contaminated clothes and master tricky necessities like drinking water while wearing a gas mask. They’ll practice identifying and neutralizing nerve gas look-alikes. Then they’ll step inside one of eight training bays for the real thing.

In the airtight bays, students will confront a tank, helicopter or other vehicle that has been sprinkled with a few drops of VX or sarin. Using portable nerve gas detectors, they will have to find and identify the toxin and then swab it with the appropriate neutralizing agent. They’ll remain in the hot zone for up to four hours.

Ft. Leonard Wood authorities say it’s vital to use live nerve gas, for the same reason that soldiers use real bullets to practice marksmanship.

“You can learn [how to shoot] using lasers,” Heib said. “But you need to get the feel of the weapon, the recoil, the sound.” Same with chemical defense, he argued: “We need to give soldiers confidence in their equipment, and we need to give them credibility when they go out in the field.”

With many neighbors backing the chemical school, the loudest criticism of Ft. Leonard Wood’s expansion comes from St. Louis, 120 miles to the northeast, where the nonprofit group Coalition for the Environment is appealing the state’s decision to grant the Army various air and water permits.

Anger Over Smoke Operations

To these environmentalists, the nerve gas is not the only cause for alarm; they’re even more furious about the Army’s plans to teach the soldiers how to blow smoke from portable generators to obscure troop movement.

The Army insists the smoke, which is generated from a mineral oil base, is safe for both soldiers and the environment. But critics worry that burning hundreds of gallons of oil a day will pollute the air far beyond the base’s 63,000 acres. They worry that oil residue might foul the Ozarks’ cherished streams. They fear for two species of endangered bats. And they argue that Ozark residents are selling out their natural heritage for the sake of quick economic development.

“Whenever people see dollars . . . they tend to become very impatient with environmental protection laws,” complained Lewis Green, an attorney for the Coalition for the Environment.

That reasoning infuriates Chuck Kremer, a retired construction worker who lives six miles from Ft. Leonard Wood and embraces the chemical school as a “terrific” boon to the economy. “The people in St. Louis think we out here in rural Missouri don’t know anything about what’s good for us. Well, we’re living firsthand with this. They’re not.”