In November 2000, low levels of GB were detected on work clothes worn by employees. At worst, it was less than one-quarter of one time-weighted average. Under federal standards, 1 TWA is the level at which a worker can be exposed without harm for eight hours a day, five days a week, for 40 years.

Jason Groenewold, director of the anti-incinerator group Families Against Incinerator Risk, Salt Lake City, contends the plant is not operating as designed.

"The original design was based on draining nerve agent from the bombs and rockets, so that no more than a slight residual amount would go into the metal parts furnace or their deactivation furnace," he said. "However, due to the jelling of agent inside a significant portion of the weapons, the Army has now been incinerating nerve agent in a manner that was never intended."

Officials "really can't assure us that what is coming out of the smokestack is safe," he said.

Dave Jackson, the incinerator's site project manager, responded that the plant operates with alarms and sampling tubes. The Depot Area Air Monitoring System (DAAMS) tubes take samples from smokestack emissions.

"The DAAMS tubes . . . are analyzed with very sophisticated instrumentation," Jackson said. "Since those things are on there 24 hours a day, we know the performance of the system for agent destruction."

The system operates better than the required destruction efficiency, he said. That requirement is a strict one, nicknamed "six nines." The plant must destroy 99.9999 percent of the nerve agent.

"We exceed that tremendously," Jackson said.

The bottom line, according to Jackson, is that the plant is in full compliance with the state's permit, according to the state's interpretation. "This is a safe facility," he said, "and you cannot forgo the fact that we have made the neighbors that I have around me safer."

A quick telephone survey of the plant's neighbors found residents of nearby Rush Valley, Tooele County, support the plant.

"Oh, we're not dead yet. We're still kicking. Of course, I don't know if I've received any harmful effects from it," said Lyle Erickson, whose comments are the closest to a criticism voiced by anyone in this small community during the interviews.

Most of his reactions were like those of his neighbors, a positive feeling about the work the plant is doing to destroy toxic chemical arms. "But one thing I do know," he said. "I think they've eliminated about 50 percent of the hazardous waste in this valley, and that's a plus."

The plant has not stopped real estate values from rising, he said. "Nobody seems too concerned about the gas thing," he said.

Odell Russell, mayor of Rush Valley, lives about four or five miles from the incinerator. "I think I can speak for the community. . . . We have no concern about it. We think it's safe, and I think they're doing a good job."

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E-mail: bau@desnews.com