POPE PRIZE

Gregory Pope  |  1998 Essay  |  1999 Essay  |  2000 Essays
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2009 Essays

Essay 1
Losing the Race Against Time: Rebuilding the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge
Christi C. Niehans

Essay 2
Chemical Weapons Burn in Arkansas
Brian D. Muegge

Essay 3
Mann's History
Melissa M. Galvez

Essays 4
Postpartum Cases: Tadoka and Mental Health
Amy B. Saltzman

Honorable Mention
Julia B. Saltz

 

Chemical Weapons Burn in Arkansas

Adam Robinson owns the funeral home on Cherry Street. Since his great-grandfather started selling caskets in 1890, the Robinsons have been helping the people of Pine Bluff, Arkansas through the deaths of loved ones. But even if Adam hadn’t been raised with that family business, he would have been aware of morbidity for different reasons. “I’ve lived in Pine Bluff for 47 of my 54 years,” he said on a recent evening after a busy day of services. “Living within a few miles of bunkers filled with chemical weapons has been a part of life here.” Pine Bluff is home to the U.S. Army’s Pine Bluff Arsenal. About 10 miles from the funeral home, a collection of low lying bunkers at the base hold 12 percent of this nation’s chemical weapons stock. In a few months, some of these weapons, the same weapons Adam Robinson grew up with, will be loaded into a 2,700 F furnace and incinerated. Over the next five years, the rest of the stockpile will follow as the country eradicates its chemical weapons arsenal. Pine Bluff Arsenal (PBA) has been at the center of this country’s biological and chemical warfare program since World War II, and now the last agents on base are slated for destruction at the new Pine Bluff Chemical Agent Disposal Facility (PCADF). When the chemicals burn in a few months, so will the last remnants of Pine Bluff’s legacy in weapons of mass destruction. The city is hoping its economic vitality doesn’t go up the smoke stack with it. Swords into Plowshares, Anthrax into Saccharine War may have seemed imminent when ground was broken at PBA on December 2, 1941, but no one guessed that America would be dragged into World War II on the following Sunday. Construction at the incendiary bomb plant accelerated, and by July munitions from the Arsenal were shipped to the European theatre. Although the use of chemical weapons was prohibited in the 1925 Geneva Protocol, the mission of PBA soon expanded to the manufacture and storage of war gases. They were produced as a deterrent to keep other nations from first use of chemical arms. After the war ceased the emerging Soviet superpower led the United States to continue its research into biological and chemical weapons. After small experiments with biological agents, the government was ready for full-scale production. In September of 1950, Secretary of State George Marshall authorized an offensive bioweapons program at PBA. The Production Development Laboratories were completed in 1953 at a cost of $90 million. The Pine Bluff Arsenal was the nation’s only site for full-scale production of biological weapons. The heart of the facility was Building 50, the production plant. It housed 18 fermenters, some as large as 7,000 gallons. The plant could produce bacterial and viral agents at staggering rates. Using normal chicken eggs in an assembly line, workers at the facility could make 500 gallons of the Venezuelan equine encephalitis virus each week. Work at the Production Development Laboratory continued until 1969. On November 29, President Nixon renounced the use of biological weapons and the first use of chemical weapons. The president stopped production of chemical weapons and ordered the biological stockpiles destroyed, stating “mankind already carries in its own hands the seeds of its own destruction.” By the time of Nixon’s declaration, Pine Bluff had produced three lethal biological weapons and four incapacitating agents. One of the lethal agents produced was bacillus anthrasis, familiar today as anthrax. The biological agents were easily destroyed, since living organisms are fragile and sensitive to environmental disruption. PBA eliminated the weapons with a combination of heat, light, and disinfectant. Residual material was plowed into the ground at Pine Bluff for fertilizer. The fermenters were steam sterilized, chopped up, and sold as scrap to industry. In 1972, after three years of cleaning, the biological laboratory was given to the Food and Drug Administration. The space was used to create the National Center for Toxicological Research, or NCTR. To this day, it is a premier research facility for the FDA and an important tenant for the arsenal. “It’s where they see how much saccharine it takes to kill a rat,” said Robinson. The seeds of its own destruction Although the biological agents were quickly destroyed, the chemical weapons remain at Pine Bluff. From World War II until Nixon’s 1969 announcement, the United States created 32,000 tons of chemical agents. Through its own production and collection from other sites, Pine Bluff was left with 3,850 tons. Today those weapons sit in 100 igloos at PBA, as the bunkers are known in the chemical weapons community. The thick walled, earth covered structures sit several miles from the buildings on base and are surrounded by layers of security. A “lightning arrestor” on each igloo prevents explosions in case of direct lightning strikes. Three chemical agents remain on base in those bunkers. They vary in their chemical structure, biological effect, and strategic use. Made famous during the trench warfare of World War I, mustard agent accounts for more 3,000 tons of the stockpile. The yellow, sweet smelling liquid can be fatal if inhaled. However, the more common problem is irritation after direct contact and mustard is classified as a blistering agent. The molecule is highly soluble in the fatty lipids that make up human skin and readily passes through to kill underlying cells. It is also a dangerous carcinogen. Blistering agents make up one type of chemical weapon. The other main type is nerve agents, chiefly GB and VX. GB, more commonly known as sarin, is a clear liquid that vaporizes easily when released. It poses an acute inhalation hazard. There are some 90,000 rockets at PBA filled with a gallon of sarin apiece. VX has a lower tendency to aerosolize than sarin and represents both a contact and inhalation hazard. The arsenal contains land mines and rockets filled with this odorless agent. Nerve agents are extremely toxic in small amounts. It is estimated that the lethal dose of sarin might be as low as 0.01 milligram per kilogram. For a 180 lb person, that means inhalation of about two one millionths of a pound could be fatal. VX is at least twice as lethal; a single drop contains the lethal dose. In 1968, more than 4,000 sheep turned up sick or dead in a Utah’s Skull Valley 30 miles from an Army experiment with VX. There are 150 tons of VX in the igloos at Pine Bluff – plenty of drops. The nerve agents in the American arsenal are pesticides for people. Sarin and VX act as cholinesterase inhibitors in the nervous system of the humans. Commercial pesticides are also cholinesterase inhibitors, specialized for insects. These inhibitors bind to an enzyme found in the body near nerve cells and inactivate it. This keeps the enzyme from its normal task of degrading chemical messengers released by nerve impulses. With the enzyme inactivated, the chemical messenger levels build up in the nervous system and disrupt the normal sequence of nerve signals. The body can suffer convulsions or paralysis, and death usually follows when the lungs become paralyzed and breathing stops. The problem facing the military and the communities around the chemical stockpiles is that the weapons cannot be placed in storage indefinitely. Over time, leaks have begun to develop in many of the rockets and some of the mustard containers. There is also danger from live explosive munitions in the rockets and land mines. “Like everything else that people make, some of the containers have outlived their shelf life,” said Christ West, spokesman for the Washington Demilitarization Company in Pine Bluff. The WDC is a defense contractor operating and managing the PBCADF and two other army incinerators. “The bottom line is that the stored weapons represent a pretty major environmental concern. You have a choice. You can leave it where it is or you can do something with it. ” “An environmental mission” In the past, getting rid of chemical weapons wasn’t this hard. The military loaded a barge with the agent and sank it in the deep ocean. The weapons might also be buried, detonated, or burned in an open pit. Advances in environmental science and an increasing awareness of combustion byproducts made those methods unethical and illegal. In the early 1980’s, the United States sought a technology that could safely and efficiently dispose of the existing stockpiles. Incineration in specially designed facilities was chosen as the “baseline” technology. An incinerator at each of the nine American chemical weapons stockpiles was projected to cost $1.7 billion with destruction of the entire arsenal by 1994. In early 2004, about 25 percent of the stockpile has been destroyed. Total costs are now estimated at $24 billion. The 1997 Chemical Weapons Convention, a treaty signed by the United States and 157 other countries, requires destruction of the stockpile by 2007. American will miss that deadline and will likely take advantage of a five-year extension. Pine Bluff is one of five sites where an incinerator has been built. Four other sites, after challenges by environmental groups and concerned community members, have switched to chemical neutralization technologies. Neutralization uses large volumes of water or basic solution to dilute the agent. That is followed by biotreatment or high pressure heating. The chief disadvantages of neutralization are large volumes of hazardous wastes and an inability to process the metal containers and rockets. Some activists say those drawbacks are still better than incineration. They worry about an accidental release of toxic gas as well as the numerous combustion byproducts released daily by the incinerator. Elizabeth Crowe is an organizer with the Chemical Weapons Working Group, a national grass roots coalition pushing for neutralization of the chemical stockpiles. “Compare apples to apples – do you want a lot of liquid waste in a container where you know where it is, or do you want thousands and thousands of pounds of contaminated air that is released into the environment?” Advocates of incineration say that those concerns are unfounded. Incinerators face stringent oversight and automatically shut down if dangerous gases are detected in smokestack monitors. At Pine Bluff, roughly one third of the $512 million contract is spent on the pollution control system. The steam coming out of the smoke stack must be 99.9999% clean of particulates and effluents – “six nines” in industry vocabulary. They point to a CDC study that found an adult’s annual dioxin exposure from an incinerator smokestack is less than the exposure from smoking a pack of cigarettes. The National Research Council, a private, non-profit institute that advises congress on scientific issues, agreed that incineration was safe in a 2002 report. “Risk assessments have determined that the major hazard to the surrounding communities arises from potential releases of agent from stockpile storage areas, not the demilitarization facilities.” Chris West, the spokesman at PBCADF, believes in the technology. “I see this work as an environmental mission. That mission includes making sure that nothing comes out of that stack into the air or water that you wouldn’t want in your backyard.” Incineration, start to finish When incineration starts in April, chemical agents will be driven from their igloos on flat bed trucks carrying Enhanced On-site Containment Systems – EONCS. They are large, thick walled barrels, with eight supporting legs sticking out like the corners of a box. Each EONC is equipped with a lightning arrestor in case of a direct hit. Transportation is one of the most dangerous parts of the process, and operations are ceased whenever a storm is in the area. At the facility the weapon is loaded into an explosive containment room. These thick walled rooms will protect workers and the community in case a rocket or mine detonates during processing. This room, like the rest of the plant, exists under negative pressure. The air pressure has been reduced so that any fumes or gases in the room stay there and are pulled to the pollution filters, which exist at even lower pressure. In the containment room, the weapon is separated. Chemical agent and rocket fuel containers are punctured and the contents drain into a vat. Years in storage have solidified many of the liquids into slow flowing sludge. These materials feed into the Liquid Incinerator, which operates at 2,700 F. That is almost 10 times the temperature used to destroy anthrax at Pine Bluff in the 1970s. The gases from this process then flow through a 2,000 F afterburner for further destruction, and finally into the pollution abatement system and out the stack. The second separation is for energetics and munitions. Machines slice rockets into 8 pieces and punch holes in the shells of land mines. These parts travel on a conveyor belt through a 1,000 F Deactivation Furnace System, where the energetics melt and any residual agent vaporizes. The material comes out as a commercially worthless mix of melted steel, aluminum, and glass. The third stream is for large metal parts, such as the one-ton mustard containers. These pieces are heated for fifteen minutes at 1,000 F in the Metal Parts Furnace. Gases again go to an afterburner. When the metal leaves the furnace, it is deemed safe for industrial use. It is sold as scrap metal and “may end up in our cars, in our computers, whatever,” according to West. Incineration does generate some hazardous byproducts. Inorganic atoms, such as fluorine in Sarin and VX or chlorine in mustard, form highly reactive acidic gases during incineration. Alkaline scrubbers remove the acids in the filtering system. After drying, an inorganic salt is collected and sent to an appropriate hazardous waste disposal facility. Construction ended at PBCADF in November 2002, but no chemical weapons have yet been burned. The plant is still in a 16-month testing period known as “systemization”. Current plans are for operations to begin in April and continue for five years. At the end of the project, private businesses with legitimate uses might be allowed to take over the plant. If no interest exists, the Washington Demilitarization Corporation (WDC) is under contract to close and decommission the incinerator. The Money of Mutually Assured Destruction When operations cease at PBCADF, the local economy will be in trouble. The population and economy of Pine Bluff have stagnated for the last few decades, reeling from losses in the railroad and cotton industries. According to the Pine Bluff Chamber of Commerce website, the Arsenal and its tenants such as the NTCR and WDC combined to form the largest single source of employment in Jefferson Country in 2001. Still, the 3,000 some jobs at those facilities are a far cry from the 20,000 people employed during construction in 1942. The fifth largest city in the state, Pine Bluff is an easy 35-mile trip down I-65 from the state capital in Little Rock. The higher wages there draw the local labor force away, coupled with the scarcity of jobs at home. The unemployment rate in Pine Bluff was 7.0% in the 2001 census, 42 percent higher than the national average. A nationwide study of local economies conducted by the Policom Corporation last year ranked Pine Bluff as the second worst economy in the country. In the last five years, the city has not placed higher than 315th in the study of 318 metropolitan areas. This destitution might explain why opposition to the incinerator has been fairly mute, especially compared to similar projects in Alabama and Oregon. The incinerator brings big money to the local economy, at least for the short term. WDC has an annual operating budget of $85 million in Pine Bluff and will employ 750 people during the operating phase. $75 million was spent procuring necessary parts locally during construction, about one third of total procurement costs. Robinson appreciates the impact the Arsenal has had in his hometown since its creation. “The Pine Bluff Arsenal has been a major part of the life of our community since its establishment. Its economic impact on our region has been incalculable… thousands of jobs created, millions of dollars for our local, poor, Southern economy.” Crowe and the CWWG think that the widespread economic impact of the Arsenal in Pine Bluff has affected the public discussion of incineration. “A lot of people in Arkansas have accepted what has been going on at the Arsenal. There is a climate of don’t rock the boat because too many people who you know work at the facility, who are your family, who are in your circle of friends.” In fact, the strongest argument against the incinerator may be economic. As long as the chemical weapons sit in igloos at PBA, the doors must stay open. When those weapons leave, so does much of the Army’s incentive to maintain the small base. Although it survived the last round of military downsizing at the end of the Cold War, Pine Bluff and other manufacturing arsenals like it are always at risk. The arsenal has historically produced smoke generating and incendiary munitions, and has more recently developed expertise in chemical and biological defensive clothing and decontamination kits. In this era of heightened awareness of terrorism, it is hoped that these new industrial forays will provide a sufficient reason to keep the plant operating. Leaders at PBA have actively courted private tenants for the extensive office and storage space on base. The Red Cross and the Department of Homeland Security have both established terrorism preparedness training centers at PBA. Several small manufacturers have moved production on site. Still, if the incinerator does not find a new use when weapons disposal ends, the local economy and the Arsenal will face the staggering loss of hundreds of jobs and millions of dollars per year. Adam Robinson isn’t sure what the future holds for PBA. He acknowledges that the Arsenal might be lost after incineration. But life in impoverished Pine Bluff will continue, whatever may come; his son is preparing to become the fifth generation owner of the funeral home on Cherry. Base realignment is not what concerns Adam. “It has always seemed to me that we should all fear doing nothing about those chemical-filled bunkers,” he said. “I know those people at the Arsenal, and I have faith in their competence and the technology in which they believe. If I’m right and the burn goes as expected, we’ll all be better off. After all, none of us want to end up like those sheep in Utah.”