ANNISTON ARMY DEPOT, Ala. (August 2, 2008) - The last nerve agent munition disposal campaign at the Anniston Chemical Agent Disposal Facility began today.
Following a planned, nine-week maintenance period of preparation, ANCDF employees
have processed the first of several thousand M23 VX nerve agent-filled land mines.
Anniston Chemical Activity employees delivered the first 10 loads of land mines
yesterday.
Like 6,095 other deliveries of munitions from Anniston Army Depot storage igloos to the ANCDF, Friday's deliveries were performed safely and without incident.
The ANCDF has been in a maintenance outage since May 24 to convert the plant from
destroying VX-filled projectiles to the necessary configuration for destroying land mines.
The change over work involved the removal of some equipment and the installation of new robotic mine-processing equipment. Employees were also trained on the proper and safe procedures to be used to safely dispose of the VX land mines.
Timothy K. Garrett, ANCDF government site project manager, said "We have safely and successfully completed our sixth munition change over. The plant and the personnel are ready to safely and successfully dispose of the VX land mines."
During the early days of the year-long land mine disposal campaign, ANCDF will conduct a slow, steady ramp up to ensure safe operations take place in compliance with environmental permits and security requirements.
To date, ANCDF disposal operations have safely eliminated more than 48 percent of the
munitions (more than 317,670 chemical munitions) and more than 46 percent of the agent stored at Anniston Army Depot.
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