EDITORIALS

---

Removing our bad mustard: Somehow, weapons must go

In our opinion

04-22-2009

It sounds like a worn-out cliché, but it's fitting nonetheless: There may be no such thing as a welcomed surprise at Anniston's incinerator.

Surprises often bring unneeded stress. And for the crew that's destroying the depot's stockpile of Cold War-era chemical weapons, anything that throws a figurative wrench into the twin jobs of ensuring safety and ridding Anniston of its munitions cache is not a joyous addition.

So you can imagine how the incinerator staff felt this winter when it realized that some of the mustard-agent mortar rounds remaining in Anniston's stockpile likely are too deteriorated to burn in the normal fashion.

One can imagine, too, how it sounded Tuesday to hear that the Army may need to add an additional unit — cost: approximately $40 million — to handle the destruction of Anniston's deteriorating mustard rounds. Again, surprises in the business of incinerating chemical weapons rarely bring good news.

It is not an optimal situation. But Anniston's stockpile must be destroyed, and the Army's expected plan to add a separate detonation chamber designed to handle these deteriorating rounds seems to be a sound path to take.

Granted, alternatives aren't bountiful. Workers could dismantle the deteriorating rounds by hand — removing the fuses, bursters and agent — but that would create what Anniston site manager Tim Garrett aptly called an "unnecessary risk" to the crew.

Given that danger — and that there could be as much as 2 percent of Anniston's total mustard stockpile in bad shape — that's hardly an option worth considering.

What's more, neither continued storage nor transportation to another site that could handle the deteriorating rounds is an option, either.

Of this, there is no choice: These rusted, damaged mustard-agent mortars must be destroyed.

The northeast Alabama community that's lived with chemical-weapons storage for decades and destruction since 2003 must continue to demand openness and an ironclad commitment to safety from Anniston's incinerator staff. To that end, we cheered loudly in December when the last of the stockpile's nerve agent was destroyed.

Undoubtedly, this community will have questions about this detonation chamber, its safety and its environmental impact. Incineration critics may voice their disapproval and find little comfort when Garrett says similar chambers are being used safely in Europe. The periods of public comment and permitting will be critical to this process.

But the bottom line — the crucial issue — is making sure the Army and the staff of Anniston's incinerator handle this new scenario with safety as the main criteria. Anything else is secondary.