The deadly nerve agent sarin now has a presence in Harford County, on Aberdeen Proving Ground, according to information released by the Army this week.
Less than a cup of the nerve agent, also known as GB, arrived at the base Saturday after it was flown from the Army?s Pine Bluff Arsenal in Arkansas.
Karen Drewen, a spokeswoman for the Army Chemical Materials Agency at Edgewood, said the sarin was transported so the chemical could be tested to determine how best to destroy it. Drewen said the sarin would be tested over the next two weeks and then destroyed.
Reactions from area residents were mixed. Some said there is no safer place for the sarin than in Edgewood, while others are apprehensive about the chemical?s presence on post.
“It makes me nervous just to be shipping a cup of sarin,” said Baltimore resident Richard Ochs, who was a member of the now-defunct APG Superfund Citizens Coalition, a grassroots environmental oversight group.
Given the numerous things that can go wrong during transportation of a dangerous chemical such as sarin, Ochs said, “one would think if there is a stockpile [of sarin] at Pine Bluff, they should be able to test it there.”
Ochs said he felt the testing should be handled at Pine Bluff, and in the wake of recent laboratory accidents on post, and now the presence of sarin in Edgewood, he said he was thinking about forming another citizens watch group to monitor activity at APG.
But Danny O?Hern, an Edgewood resident and a retired APG employee, disagreed. “This is probably the best place for it [the sarin],” O?Hern said.
“I feel better having it come here,” she said, adding that Pine Bluff?s facilities are not as advanced as Edgewood?s.
Former APG Superfund Citizens Coalition president Glenda Bowling agreed with O?Hern. “I don?t think Pine Bluff is equipped to handle it,” she said.
If the Army is transporting less than four liters of any hazardous material, the law does not require that the public to be notified, said George Mercer, a spokesman for Aberdeen Proving Ground.
