While their allies across the nation have filed multiple lawsuits against Army plans to build incinerators to destroy the U.S. chemical weapons stockpile, Indiana activists are praising the recent award of a contract to dispose of agent stored at the Newport Army Depot using a non-smokestack technology. Hoosier community groups are also urging federal policy-makers to adopt similar, environmentally benign destruction methods at other sites. The Newport contract calls for destroying the almost three million pounds of dangerous agent by neutralization followed by secondary oxidation treatment . The latest anti-incineration legal action was filed in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, earlier this month.
Similar suits are ongoing in Utah, Alabama, and Oregon.
But we are equally committed to seeing that this dangerous technology is stopped at all other sites. We are not giving up helping other communities just because we've achieved our goals in Indiana. The contrast between locations where incineration has been abandoned, Maryland and Indiana, and the sites where incinerators are operating or under construction is unmistakable. Inc. In Oregon, Alabama and Arkansas more than a dozen groups have filed legal challenges to the Army's plans to burn chemical weapons. A Georgia organization has also sued to stop the Alabama facility, charging that emissions of chemical weapons agents and other toxic material from incinerator smokestacks will drift across the state line and impact their health and environment.