OP-ED COLUMNS

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Phillip Tutor: Dumb, poor and oblivious in Alabama

05-22-2009

We were doomed. We had no chance.

We live in or near Anniston, an average-sized northeast Alabama town with a regrettable history of environmental pollution and far too many residents who live within sight of the poverty line.

Not enough Calhoun Countians are college-educated. Our racial diversity gets in the way. What's more, we don't have the clout to force state- and D.C.-level politicians to ensure our safety, anyway.

We simply didn't know any better.

So when the U.S. government and the Army decided years ago to rid the nation of its Cold War-era chemical weapons, little ol' Anniston asked a few questions, acted as if it knew what it was doing, but eventually it became an uneducated pawn in the flawed notion that incineration was the best way to send these munitions to their grave.

Is that my opinion? No. But bear with me.

Last Sunday, an editorial in the Lexington Herald-Leader — a fine newspaper — opined of the wisdom shown by Kentuckians who have fought the Army's attempts to build an incinerator for the stockpile at Blue Grass Army Depot. "Refusal to burn weapons looking smarter all the time," the headline read.

The story there is much different than the story here. In Kentucky, where anti-incineration activists are as common as mint juleps on Derby day, another destruction method — neutralization — has been selected for its stockpile.

In Kentucky, Blue Grass won't begin destroying its weapons until 2019, the Pentagon has told Congress. Its stockpile remains intact.

In Anniston, in the weapons-destruction business since 2003, nearly all of the stockpile's risk to the public has been eliminated, and only a large cache of mustard-agent munitions remains. There have been no reported major problems at Anniston's incinerator: no evacuations, no agent release off site, no doom-and-gloom. In the not-so-distant future, this community will be free of the specter of what's housed inside those ominous storage igloos at Anniston Army Depot.

That goal, twinned with public safety, cannot be forgotten.

Look, I have no interest in re-opening the incineration-vs.-neutralization debate. That may be a headline in Kentucky, but it's an old, tired story here. What's more, this community was so severely divided over that debate that some here still distrust the Army, the politicians who sided with incineration and, quite frankly, the stance of this newspaper's editorial board.

On all those issues, people's minds are made up.

For some, incineration was the way to go. For others, incineration equated to a permitted go-ahead to pollute our air and our bodies.

And for those on the radical side of this issue, incineration towns such as Anniston won't know the full extent of the decision to burn until future environmental studies prove, or disprove, the belief that even highly regulated and monitored incinerator emissions will cause residents long-range harm.

The editorialists in Kentucky were right to discuss the reality that environmental pollution often is concentrated in low-income areas with high minority populations. Sadly, that's a proven fact. Thanks to Monsanto, Anniston can write that book, and has. Or, think of it this way: Wouldn't things have been different if the PCBs released into Snow Creek had flowed freely into the front lawn of the Anniston Country Club or the lovely median on Glenwood Terrace?

You know that answer.

But clandestine PCBs release is a different animal than permitted incineration. What's more, these sentences from their editorial gave me pause: "The (U.S.) incinerators are in places that are home to large poor and minority populations, are isolated or both: Pine Bluff, Ark., Anniston, Ala., Umatilla, Ore., Tooele, Utah," the newspaper wrote, and later added, "The military bowed to local insistence on neutralization in places, including Kentucky's Madison County, where residents are better educated, more likely to be white and able to flex more political muscle."

The insinuation, intentional or not, was that smarter, whiter and more politically savvy areas would say no to incineration because they could better understand the concepts and defend their interests. Meanwhile, everyone else — the dehumanized "other" — would succumb to their failings and get the worst of the available choices.

Raise your hand if you feel a twinge of insult.

Wish the good people of Kentucky no harm. We're Alabamians, and we've heard worse slights. That they chose another path doesn't mean that ours is inherently wrong or misguided.

On this, we're simply going to have to agree to disagree.