Associated Press
October 18, 2003

Oregon depot: A legacy of damage and an uncertain future

By GILLIAN FLACCUS
Associated Press Writer

HERMISTON, Ore. --

Karyn Jones remembers taking an elementary school test to a background of explosions that rattled classroom walls and made children cry. The principal told the class the thunderous booms were nothing to worry about - just some workers blowing up old weapons at the nearby Army depot.

But the explosions were something to worry about.

Forty years later, the environmental legacy of those explosions haunts this small town in rural northeastern Oregon. During the 1950s and 1960s, nearly 80 million gallons of explosives runoff leached into the groundwater and for years lead spewed into the air from a weapons furnace.

As Congress debates whether to exempt the military from some environmental laws, the Army is preparing to incinerate nearly 4,000 tons of deadly nerve and mustard gas stored at the same installation, the Umatilla Chemical Depot. Many residents say they distrust the Army today because of its past environmental record.

"We didn't know about the groundwater contamination for years. We didn't know about the soil contamination for years. So how can you be trusting?" said Jones. "Nobody even told us about the chemical weapons being shipped in."

State and federal regulators have worked for nearly 15 years with about $70 million allocated by the Defense Department to clean up the lead and groundwater pollution. Officials estimate it will be at least another decade before crews finish removing buried shrapnel.

And the chemical weapons, transferred to the depot in 1961 from stockpiles around the country, remain.

Half of the eight chemical stockpiles left nationwide are listed by the government as national cleanup priorities because of serious pollution that occurred decades ago from traditional weapons. Those sites today store a combined 30,000 tons of chemical weapons that must be destroyed within nine years under international treaty.

At the Umatilla depot, the Army plans to start feeding projectiles, bombs, mines and spray tanks loaded with sarin and VX nerve gas into a massive incinerator early next year.

It estimates it will take six years to destroy the Cold War-era weapons, many of which have sprung tiny leaks because of their age. Twenty-two leaks have been reported at Umatilla since January 2000. The two most recent ones occurred within three days of each other just weeks ago.

The Army says the risk of the leaks- or of a major disaster that could release tons of noxious chemicals into the air - is far greater than the risk of smoke puffing from incinerator stacks.

Residents aren't so sure. A local watchdog group backed by the Sierra Club and the Oregon Wildlife Federation has filed three lawsuits in federal court in a bid to stop the Army. Two lawsuits are in appeals court; a decision on the third is pending.

The lawsuits allege that incineration is unsafe and that the smoke coming out of the stacks could contain poisonous particles that pose a risk that might not surface for decades.

"We're worried about potential brain damage, learning disabilities, cancer, infertility. No one can tell about the health risks from exposure," said Jones, the lead plaintiff. "We don't want to have the chemical weapons sitting there forever, but we really think the Army has overstepped its bounds on this."

Don Barclay, the Army site manager for the incinerator project at the depot, says residents' concerns are unfounded.

Monitors throughout the incinerator building and around the depot's perimeter will constantly scan for chemical releases. The Army, supervised by the state, will also test the soil, air, water and plants around the facility on a quarterly basis for contamination.

"It's an unknown and that's a cause for concern and I recognize that," Barclay said. "But we'll know if something does get out. We'll know where it's coming from. It won't be in 20 years."

An incident at the depot in September 1999 increased alarm among residents. Several dozen construction workers fell ill while building the incinerator, located near the bunkers storing the chemical weapons. Many of the men still suffer symptoms that include headaches, memory loss, nausea, coughing and difficulty breathing.

A lengthy investigation by federal regulators and the Army never determined the cause of the workers' illness, but the men believe they were poisoned by a leak of nerve gas from one of the bunkers. They sued the Army in federal court; the case is expected to go to trial this month.

But those opposed to incineration want to see another technology called neutralization used in its place. Neutralization uses baths of hot water and caustic solutions to break down the chemical agents.

Proponents say the technology releases nothing into the environment and therefore is safer.

Stockpile sites in Indiana, Maryland, Kentucky and Colorado will use neutralization. Kentucky and Colorado switched to neutralization midstream after Congress in 1997 ordered the Army to stop its planning at those sites while alternative technologies were reviewed.

Sites in Oregon, Alabama, Arkansas and Utah stuck with incineration. The four were not included in the congressional hold order.

"Every community that's been given an option - incineration or this alternative or that alternative - by the Army has rejected incineration," said Craig Williams, director of the Chemical Weapons Working Group in Berea, Ky. "To neutralize this material, you don't even need an air contamination permit."

Barclay, the Army project manager at Umatilla, says that when the Oregon depot received its incinerator permit, neutralization was still considered an experimental technology. There was no opposition from residents to incineration at the time despite an extensive public comment period, he said.

"There are no surprises for people. They know what we're doing and where we're going with this," Barclay said. "The vast majority of people here want us to destroy this product."