TOOELE COUNTY, UTAH: WHEN FEAR MAKES SENSE

The people who live one valley away from America’s biggest stockpile of chemical weapons didn’t really worry–until the day the sheep died. About 6,400 of them keeled over in their fields on March 14, 1968, when a chemical-weapons test at the Dugway Proving Ground went awry, and the area’s patriotic Mormons began asking questions. A recently uncovered Army report from 1972 suggests the sheep died from a lethal combination of nerve-gas traces and pesticides, the mixture some experts believe is responsible for Gulf War syndrome. Years later came another piece of disturbing news: it turned out that the nuclear-bomb tests conducted by the Pentagon in next-door Nevada from 1951 to 1962 were not safe after all. President George Bush acknowledged as much in 1990, and since then the U.S. has paid $67 million to 1,338 of the “downwinders,” many of whom live in Utah and believe their exposure to radiation caused leukemia and other ailments. An apparent victim was former Utah Governor Scott Matheson, who died of bone-marrow cancer a week before Bush’s admission.

Until then, Utah, and Tooele County in particular, had always been a benevolent playground for the military. But the history of deception here has turned people like Lisa Puchner into reluctant agitators. “Mormons used to trust the government,” she says. “But we’ve been abused, so there’s a lot of mistrust now.” Which is why, now that the Army wants to destroy the state’s 13,000 tons of deadly poisons, many residents are in no mood to comply. Since last August, the Pentagon has been conducting test burns of the weapons stored at Tooele County’s Deseret Chemical Depot, just 35 miles southwest of greater Salt Lake City’s 1.3 million residents. For the Pentagon, there is a sense of urgency about getting rid of these chemical-laden rockets and bombs, which are crammed into 208 earth-covered igloos. For one thing, the Chemical Weapons Convention ratified by the U.S. Senate last April requires their prompt destruction. But above all, most of the weapons are more than 30 years old, and their aluminum containers have begun to corrode. The Army says continuing to stockpile the weapons, which could be vulnerable to anything from explosions to earthquakes, poses much greater health risks than burning the stuff. A severe accident at the depot, the Army calculates, could kill as many as 89,000 people, most of them in Salt Lake City.

But opponents of the incinerator, a coalition of environmentalists, parents and former incinerator workers, fear that traces of sarin and mustard gases that are wafting from the stacks could cause health problems years from now. And their protests–waged in court and around military installations–have been fortified by the incinerator’s shaky record. Since the test burns began last year, the Army has shut it down seven times for such problems as chemical leaks, a jammed conveyor belt and a broken hydraulic line. So far, three top officials, including the incinerator’s manager, have been fired or demoted; each has publicly complained about poor safety practices.

It took an internal report in 1994 to persuade the Army that its strategy of simply declaring that nothing would go wrong was not working in Tooele. “Many people with whom we spoke concluded that the Army and the government could not be trusted to tell the truth,” the report said. “Even its supporters express the belief that the Army lies.” So last August the Army awarded a contract worth as much as $30 million to Booz, Allen & Hamilton, a private consulting firm, to help promote incineration in Tooele and other depot sites. A p.r. campaign followed. “We’re safely eliminating chemical weapons,” proclaims the banner flapping above the Army’s storefront office. Inside are flyers describing the chemical-burning process and showing the Pillsbury Doughboy-like inflatable suit worn by incinerator workers. Fewer than two people a day stop by.

–By Mark Thompson