A Multnomah County judge denied an injunction to halt a plan to destroy some of the nation’s Cold War-era chemical weapons at Umatilla.

KGW The Umatilla depot stores about 7,300 tons of the nation's chemical stockpile of mustard, sarin and VX nerve agent.

Judge John Wittmayer agreed with lawyers for the state and the Washington Demilitarization Company that the issue would be better heard before the state Court of Appeals.

The appeals court already has a case pending on the issue.

The Oregon Environmental Quality Commission voted 4-0 last week in Hermiston last week to allow the burning to begin.

Operations start ramping up on Wednesday, when 15 rockets loaded with the nerve agent GB sarin are scheduled to be removed from a storage igloo at the Umatilla Chemical Depot outside Hermiston. The rockets will be loaded onto a truck, and carried with a containment cylinder inside the adjoining incinerator, said U.S. Army spokeswoman Mary Binder.

One rocket is to be chopped, drained, and run through a special furnace on Thursday. Aside from residue on rockets, the deadly liquid nerve agent will not begin going through a high-temperature furnace for about a month, when a sufficient amount is built up in a storage tank, Binder said.

Opponents who would prefer the weapons be destroyed with a chemical neutralization process, as is being done in one site in Maryland, filed a motion for an injunction to stop the incinerator from firing up.