US Court Asked to Halt Nerve Gas Destruction
Date: 05-Aug-03
Country: USA
Author: Verna Gates
The U.S. Army, complying with an international treaty, is expected to begin burning the first of its M-55 rockets containing the deadly nerve agent sarin on Wednesday at its $1 billion chemical weapons disposal facility in Anniston.
In a motion filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, the Sierra Club environmental group and other opponents of the plan argued that large amounts of dangerous chemicals would be released into the environment if the Army and Department of Defense were allowed to proceed.
The Army's weapons disposal facility is located in the middle of Anniston, which is home to about 110,000 people, and less than 100 miles from the more heavily populated cities of Atlanta and Birmingham.
"It is no secret that this community is grossly unprepared for an incident with these weapons of mass destruction," said Craig Williams, director of the Chemical Weapons Working Group, one of the groups requesting the restraining order.
"We are confident that when presented with the facts, a judge will come to that same conclusion," Williams said.
Military officials have said the project does not pose an undue danger to local residents, but have admitted they will begin the incineration process by destroying chemical weapons that posed the greatest danger to the community.
Thousands of residents in what is called the pink zone, the area designated as the most at risk in the event of a chemical release, have been offered protective hoods, air filters and shelter kits in preparation for the event.
The Army's weapons depot in Anniston contains more than 2,000 tons of rockets, artillery shells and land mines, which contain sarin, VX and other nerve agents. There have been hundreds of small leaks from these weapons since 1982.
The stockpile accounts for about 6 percent of the 31,000 tons of U.S. chemical weapons that must be destroyed by 2007 under the terms of an international treaty. Part of the stockpile has been eliminated at incinerators in Utah and on an atoll in the Pacific.
In their complaint yesterday, environmentalists also asked for an injunction to prevent further incineration of chemical weapons at the Army's disposal site in Utah.
They contend the Army should be destroying chemical weapons with an alternative low-heat, low-pressure "chemical neutralization" technology that they claim offers a safer way to destroy dangerous toxic agents.
About 750 local residents are employed at the disposal facility in Anniston, a pro-military working-class town hard hit by the recent national economic slump.
