Leaking mortar found at depot      

STOCKTON, Tooele County — Workers found a leaking mustard mortar round Tuesday afternoon at the Oquirrh Mountain Facility at the Army's Deseret Chemical Depot.
     
The 4.2-inch leaking round was discovered about 1 p.m. during reconfiguration operations — that's when workers take the mortars that are packaged for battlefield use for soldiers, remove the energetics from the mortars and repackage them into big wooden pallets.
     
"They then go back into a storage igloo. They will be destroyed when we start the mustard campaign," possibly by the end of 2005, Deseret Chemical spokesman Chuck Sprague said.
     
The leaking mortar round was put into a larger airtight container for continued storage, a Deseret Chemical statement said.
     
There never was a danger to the environment or public because reconfiguration was performed within a facility specially designed for dealing with this type of situation, the statement said.
     
As a precaution, employees in the immediate vicinity were taken to a medical facility for observation. They showed no signs of mustard agent exposure, the statement said.