(The following is excerpted from the September 1997 issue of "Common Sense", the newsletter of the Chemical Weapons Working Group, published by the Kentucky Environmental Foundation.)
"The Army needs to hear the message, loud and clear -- merely because a permit for a chemical weapons incinerator has been issued, we are not giving up," said CWWG member Karyn Jones. In February 1997, the state of Oregon issued a permit to Raytheon Corp. to begin construction of an chemical weapons incinerator at the Umatilla Army Depot, near the Columbia River basin in northeast Oregon. Jones is a board member of GASP, a community group in Hermiston, Oregon which, along with the Oregon Sierra Club and the Oregon Wildlife Federation, recently filed a complaint with the Oregon Circuit Court to stop the incinerator from being built.
The complaint charges that the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) and the Environmental Quality Commission (EQC) acted improperly in issuing the incinerator permit, because their decision was notbased on the following:
Oregon state law mandates that DEQ and the EQC only permit the "best available technology." In fact, incineration has proven all of the above arguments to be false.
The complaint addresses the failure of DEQ and EQC to ensure adequate monitoring requirements, an evaluation of non-cancer health impacts, emergency preparedness, characterization of process wastes processing information, and many other state and federal requirements. Neither did DEQ and EQC consider the health impacts of toxic chemicals on vulnerable populations like fetuses and infants, the elderly, or people with sensitive immune systems.
The actions by DEQ and the EQC might have been understood if no other disposal methods were available. But in fact, several alternative technologies exist. Neutralization and closed loop follow-up treatments have already been approved for the Maryland and Indiana stockpiles, and the Army is currently conducting a search for technologies other than incineration which can destroy assembled chemical weapons like those stored at Umatilla and other stockpile sites. Still, unless Oregonians keep pushing for these safer alternatives, Bob Palzer of the Oregon Sierra Club said, "Oregon is going to get stuck with an inferior technology and the potential to have it used as a national disposal site. This is unacceptable."
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