Related link: National Public Radio interview with journalist Troy Turner: https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1418277
By Troy Turner
Editor-in-chief
It was 20 years ago on Aug. 9, 2003, when the Anniston Chemical Agent Disposal Facility began destruction of more than 7 percent of the U.S. military’s chemical weapons stockpile.
That’s how much of the military’s chemical arsenal was stored at the Anniston Army Depot in this east-central Alabama city with a population of more than 100,000 people living in the surrounding area.
Or, to size it up another way, before the Anniston facility completed chemical demilitarization operations in 2011, it had destroyed 661,529 nerve agent and mustard agent munitions.
Included in that vast array of deadly toxins and explosives was 2,254 tons of chemical agent, much of it among the most deadly and horrific chemical weapons known to man. The stockpile included rockets, bombs, projectiles and land mines armed with Sarin, VX nerve agent or mustard gas.
“One thumbnail of this stuff could kill 40,000 people,” a military officer once said of the munitions that included VX nerve agent.
That particular chemical agent mounted on rockets was depicted in the fictional 1996 action movie “The Rock,” in which Nicholas Cage’s character put it bluntly when he said “It’s very, very horrible sir. It’s one of those things we wish we could disinvent… If the rocket renders its aerosol, it could take out the entire city of people.”
That’s why military experts, government officials and local residents alike all shared high praise, appreciation, and perhaps most of all relief when the job at Anniston was completed without a single incident in which the public was harmed or put on disaster alert during the destruction process.
Prior to mission complete, the local populace remained tense and closely attune to work actively handling the munitions, as local emergency planning officials even went the route of issuing gas masks and preparing school and public gathering places with air-tight rooms in case of a leak, serious accident or, in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks even sabotage at the destruction facility.
“We made a commitment to the people of Alabama and to the citizens who live and work near or on Anniston Army Depot,” Timothy K. Garrett, the government project manager in Anniston during the destruction process, said at the time. “We committed ourselves to the safe destruction of the entire chemical agent-filled munitions stockpile here.”
Now, two decades after Anniston’s work began, the United States Department of Defense announced on July 7, 2023, that the final munition in the nation’s obsolete stockpile of chemical weapons was on that date safely destroyed, a disarmament milestone that had in its progress a critical role played in Alabama.
An international treaty
The achievement marks the destruction of all chemical weapon stockpiles declared to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons in The Hague. The OPCW is the implementing body of the Chemical Weapons Convention, an international arms control treaty the U.S. ratified in 1997.
The treaty prohibits the development, production, acquisition, stockpiling, retention, transfer or use of chemical weapons by all members. The mission-complete accomplishment meets the United States’ commitment to complete its destruction operations by Sept. 30, 2023.
The final sarin nerve agent-filled M55 rocket was destroyed July 7 at the Blue Grass Army Depot, Kentucky.
As mandated by Congress in 1986, destruction of the U.S. chemical weapons stockpile, which at one time comprised more than 30,000 tons of chemical warfare agents in explosively configured weapons and bulk containers, began in 1990 on Johnston Atoll in the Pacific. The U.S. Army went on to successfully complete destruction of weapons at six more sites across the continental U.S. by 2012 at installations in Alabama (Anniston), Arkansas, Indiana, Maryland, Oregon and Utah.
While those stockpiles were under destruction, additional legislation required the Defense Department to assess and demonstrate alternative technologies to destroy chemical weapons by means other than incineration. Successful implementation of alternative technologies resulted in the safe destruction of the remaining chemical weapons stored at the U.S. Army Pueblo Chemical Depot in Colorado and at the Blue Grass Army Depot in Kentucky.
In addition, a team of companies in Colorado led by Bechtel National, Inc. completed the destruction of more than 780,000 mustard agent-filled projectiles at U.S. Army Pueblo Chemical Depot on June 22. Destruction operations in Pueblo began in March 2015, with more than 2,613 U.S. tons of chemical agents destroyed using a neutralization method followed by biotreatment and explosive destruction technologies.
The final munition was destroyed July 7 in Kentucky by a joint-venture team led by Bechtel National, Inc. and Parsons Corporation, using neutralization and explosive destruction technologies to eliminate more than 100,000 mustard agent and nerve agent-filled projectiles and nerve agent-filled rockets. Destruction operations at the Blue Grass Army Depot began in June 2019, with more than 523 U.S. tons of chemical agents safely destroyed.
Michael S. Abaie, a DOD program executive officer, said the facilities will enter a closure phase for the next three to four years.
“This includes disposal of secondary wastes, decontamination and decommissioning of facilities and equipment, disposition of property, demolition of some facilities, and close-out of contracts and environmental permits. During closure, the safety of the workforce, the public and the environment will remain the program’s top priority,” said Abaie.
The Department of Defense news service contributed to this report.
Additional related links:
Anniston facility closure information:
https://www.peoacwa.army.mil/2023/06/22/facts-anniston-field-office/
Transcript of senior-official roundtable:
