Utah conceals information about nerve gas alarm

Operations resumed

Reader advisory: slanted news, environmentalist viewpoint
Primary source: CWWG

July 22, 2004

Utah regulators denied public access to information following a July 17, 2004 nerve gas alarm, so restarting of operations was premature, environmental groups are claiming. Chemical Weapons Working Group has declared that operations at Tooele Chemical Agent Disposal Facility should not have resumed until "critical questions were answered."

Skeptical of the Army's version of the incident, environmentalists unsuccessfully requested the release of information related to a nerve agent alarm which occurred at the Tooele Chemical Agent Disposal Facility on Saturday, July 17.

In a press release issued less than three days after the event, Army officials said the incinerator suspended destruction operations when nerve agent monitors in the main smokestack detected a "substance or interferant which exhibited characteristics similar to that of VX (nerve) agent."

Members of some citizen groups, however, do not trust the Army's claim that the release was not dangerous and that it came from mortar used to rebrick the liner of a furnace about three weeks prior to the incident.

"Either VX nerve agent or its 'evil twin' came out of that smokestack for three days, and the Army is trying to claim it's no big deal," said Jason Groenewold, Director of the Healthy Environment Alliance of Utah.

According to CWWG, the Army claimed that only one alarm occurred at 6:34 a.m. on the seventeenth, but Groenewold claims to have learned in conversations with Utah regulators and Army officials that monitors were detecting VX as recently as Monday afternoon at levels 14 times above allowable concentrations.

While Army officials claimed that there was no VX being processed at the time of the event, a state environmental regulator reportedly told Groenewold that VX contaminated materials were being processed at the time of the alarm.

"The probable cause of this alarm was quickly dismissed and the Army now wants us to believe that brick mortar exhibits characteristics similar to nerve agent," said Groenewold. He reported that the Army had not produced data to support their claim. Furthermore, previous tests of the mortar taken before it was used did not reveal contaminants that would have caused a nerve agent alarm.

"The only way an alarm could go off in the smokestack, but not in any of the furnace ducts that lead to the smokestack is if the monitoring system does not work reliably," he said.

HEAL Utah submitted a request for the computer generated information that would reveal what happened during this three day event, but Utah regulators have denied HEAL Utah's Government Records and Access Management Act request.

Mick Harrison, an attorney who has represented the CWWG and numerous whistleblowers from the Utah incinerator reportedly said, "This is a cover-up."

Craig Williams, Director of the Kentucky based Chemical Weapons Working Group, called Army's approach "the perfect shell game." Williams claims, "Army officials interpret monitoring data to get the results they desire, then, once they convince people that the emitted substance isn't agent, they feel free to claim the substance isn't dangerous although its identity and toxicity remain unknown."

"A truly protective system would include monitors that accurately identify and record agent releases and similar toxic emissions and would not let the results be manipulated in this manner. Such systems do exist," he said.




------------------- Primary source: Chemical Weapons Working Group (www.cwwg.org) -------------------

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