05/10/2004
The Army and a contractor have been fined $185,000 for violating hazardous
waste disposal regulations during a test of a chemical weapons incinerator
in eastern Oregon. No chemical weapons were involved in the test, but the Oregon Department
of Environmental Quality said the Army and its contractor, the Washington
Demilitarization Co., bypassed some safety systems at the Umatilla Chemical
Depot in Hermiston. The violations took place during a "shakedown" run of the furnace between
July 18 and July 31, 2003, to process surrogate materials before actually
conducting a trial burn with the incinerator, said Shelly Ingram, a DEQ spokeswoman.
The Army and Washington Demilitarization Co. were fined $46,200 each for
feeding material into the metal parts furnace without operating an automatic
waste feed cut-off system and $46,200 each for failing to operate a carbon
filtration system. "They disabled the monitoring and they bypassed the carbon filter," Ingram
said. Even though it was only test material, "in Oregon, we consider it hazardous
waste," she said. Mary Binder, an Army spokeswoman, said the fine would be reviewed. "We take the hazardous waste permit very seriously, and we need to follow
permit requirements," Binder said. But she said preparations to begin destroying the aging stockpile of chemical
weapons are on schedule. The $2.4 billion incinerator project, known as the Umatilla Chemical Agent
Disposal Facility, was completed in 2001. The four natural gas-fired incinerators have been undergoing tests, with
a decision on final approval expected July 16 by the Oregon Environmental
Quality Commission. The obsolete chemical weapons have been stored at the depot since 1962
in half-buried concrete bunkers known as "igloos." More than 3,700 tons of deadly nerve gas components, including VX and
Sarin, are scheduled to be destroyed over the next six years.