Anniston Star
October 6, 2002

Oregon incinerator has problems of its own

By Matthew Creamer
Star Staff Writer

The chemical weapons incinerator in Oregon is struggling to meet environmental regulations as it undergoes testing on surrogate materials.

Two shakedown burns on industrial solvents this summer failed to meet limits on the emissions of heavy metals. The environmental agency in Oregon has halted burning at the plant, located seven miles from Hermiston, as Army officials and experts try to find the cause of the problems.

The Oregon incinerator's problems, however, aren't worrying Army and environmental officials in Alabama. Although the Anniston Chemical Agent Demilitarization Facility is repeating some surrogate trial runs first done earlier this year, these have nothing to do with the flaws that have shown up at the Oregon facility, according to a local Army spokesman.

These repeat runs, which began Friday and were expected to last about a day, "have nothing to do with our ability to process heavy metals," said Mike Abrams, public affairs officer at the Anniston incinerator. "We didn't have the same type of issues you're dealing with in Oregon."

A spokesman for the Alabama Department of Environmental Management said what goes on at the Oregon facility, though it's very similar to the one near Anniston, is not necessarily relevant here.

"What goes on there does not raise alarms for us " said Clint Niemeyer, the spokesman. The Oregon issues weren't a problem during the Anniston facility's shakedown period, he said.

The Anniston incinerator has been slowed down somewhat by the surrogate burn process. Dissatisfied with a protocol used in a laboratory analysis of a portion of the March tests, ADEM ordered that low-temperature surrogate testing on the liquid agent incinerator be repeated.

The problem with one of the Oregon plant's two liquid agent incinerators stems from the facility's inability as yet to destroy lead and chromium. The Army has assembled a team of experts, both in chemical demilitarization in particular and incineration in general, to assess the situation, which will have to be explained to regulators before the burning resumes.

"We want some answers before they begin feeding metals again," said Nick Speed, senior
hazardous waste specialist at the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality.

Exposure to lead and chromium can lead to health problems, but such problems are not a likely result of the test runs, because they were so brief.

The current problems in Oregon first surfaced during a four-hour run in August, in which the emissions for several metals exceeded the limits. In a second run, which took place the following month, the feed-rate for the metals and the temperature of the furnace were lowered, but the facility still was exceeding limits on two metals.

To simulate expected metal content in the agent, the surrogate material - industrial compounds that are more difficult to destroy than chemical agent - are spiked with metals.

The Army defended its changing the test conditions on the grounds that the conditions are a
conservative estimate of the metals level during agent operations. "The objective is to present a scenario during a test that is a worse case than we expect to find during agent operations," said Army Project Manager Don Barclay.

This planning, Barclay said, allows some leeway for changing the conditions while still presenting a test that accurately depicts operations with agent.

When it comes time for Oregon's formal surrogate trial burns, which will be evaluated by state officials, these conditions will determine the rate at which it can burn actual agent. And the heavy metals issue could suggest that the rate at which agent is burned might have to be reduced, Speed said.

"There are certainly some concerns here," he said. "But this is not extraordinary to a startup operation. The purpose of the mini-burn is make sure the equipment is functioning properly."