A demolition crew began work May 7 to remove a facility in Alabama that supported the destruction of the U.S. chemical weapons stockpile in Colorado and Kentucky.
“The demolition of the Anniston Static Detonation Chamber is another sign of the mission coming to an end, a long-time goal being achieved,” said Tim Garrett, director of field operations, Program Executive Office, Assembled Chemical Weapons Alternatives, or PEO ACWA, the organization that completed destruction of the U.S. stockpile in 2023.
On that day, workers from a Missouri-based contractor began using an excavator to demolish a 7,000-square-foot structure that housed the Static Detonation Chamber, or SDC, two filter units and a monitoring house. The work is expected to be completed toward the end of May. Demolition is proceeding quickly as no chemical-agent decontamination is required, and most of the resultant scrap is being recycled at facilities in Mobile and Birmingham, both in Alabama.
A month earlier, on April 3, workers at the Anniston Field Office, or AFO, used the SDC to destroy the last non-contaminated rocket motor from the Blue Grass Army Depot in Kentucky. That milestone ended 11 years of support destroying non-contaminated chemical weapons components from Kentucky and the U.S. Army Pueblo Chemical Depot in Colorado.
The company taking down the SDC is the same one that demolished the Anniston Chemical Agent Disposal Facility, which, between 2003 and 2011, destroyed more than 660,000 chemical munitions containing 2,254 tons of VX, GB and mustard agents under the U.S. Army Chemical Materials Agency (now Activity), or CMA. The Anniston Army Depot originally stored 7% of the nation’s declared chemical weapons stockpile.
“The people of Anniston and surrounding areas have supported this mission for decades,” Garrett said. “The skill and experience of the team here have made a major contribution to the effort to make the state and nation a safer place.”
Once the Anniston SDC unit is demolished, the next step is closing out the environmental permits, expected to be completed by December. The eventual closeout of the program’s field office at the bustling east-central Alabama depot will complete another chapter in the installation’s long history.
