August 14, 2004

Panel OKs weapon incineration

By Jeff Barnard
The Associated Press
  

GRANTS PASS - An Eastern Oregon incinerator got the go-ahead Friday to start destroying part of the nation's stockpile of Cold War-Era chemical weapons.

After considering the results of three years of testing, the Oregon Environmental Quality Commission voted 4-0 in Hermiston 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.

``I'm sure some may feel it's overdue,'' said commission chairman Mark Reeve in a telephone interview from Hermiston.

``Others who never want to see it operate feel it's too soon. But I think it's the appropriate time given the circumstances that we're in.''

Reeve noted that a last-ditch effort by incinerator opponents could still halt the process. Opponents who would prefer the weapons be destroyed with a chemical neutralization process, as is being done in one site in Maryland, have filed a motion for an injunction to stop the incinerator from firing up, which will be heard on Monday.

``No incinerator can ever do a 100 percent burn,'' Karyn Jones, leader of the opposition group known as GASP, said from Hermiston.

``While we are concerned about a catastrophic accident, our primary focus is on day to day operations, what will be coming out of the stack, and looking at the short-term impacts and long-term potential impacts.''

Jones said she thought it was significant that during the meeting, Department of Environmental Quality staff reviewing operations at other disposal facilities around the country noted problems continuing to crop up at the other incinerators, but not at the one chemical neutralization facility operating in Aberdeen, Md.