Friday, March 12, 2004
Federal
officials address depot incineration issues
By AMYJO
BROWN of the East Oregonian
ajbrown@eastoregonian.com
HERMISTON — Two
senior level federal officials are spending the week in the county, listening
to community leaders and residents discuss the Umatilla Chemical Depot’s
incineration project.
In doing so, they are keeping a promise they made months ago
to the Umatilla and Morrow County’s Chemical Stockpile Emergency Preparedness
Program, which coordinates the emergency response of communities surrounding
the chemical stockpiles at the Depot.
“We’re meeting all the stakeholders and talking about all the
issues,” said Craig Conklin, chief of the nuclear and chemical hazards branch
of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).
CSEPP members requested that leadership be visible this spring
as activities rev up around the depot, said Dennis Legal, director of chemical
stockpile emergency preparedness for the Office of the Deputy Assistant Secretary
of the Army Elimination of Chemical Weapons.
The depot is preparing to destroy 3,717 tons of nerve and blister
agents starting in July.
This is the officials’ first trip to eastern Oregon.
“A lot of progress has taken place, a lot of very positive
progress” in the local area, Conklin told CSEPP board members at a meeting
held Wednesday at the Hermiston Outreach Office.
He said this spring would be an interesting time for federal
coordinators of emergency response systems.
“Three facilities are approaching online status,” he said,
referring to the depot here and two other facilities around the country also
preparing to start destroying chemical stockpiles.
He said that though the federal budget is tight, “we’ll make
sure all three communities are protected to the maximum that we can with
the limited resources that we have.”
There are a few areas the communities should work on in order
to provide that maximum safety protection, reported J. Krause Wilson, decision
science product group manager for Innovative Emergency Management Inc., a
company studying the community’s response to possible catastrophic accidents
at the depot.
Right now, “better evacuation routes and better sheltering-in-place
techniques would be good to do,” he said.
However, Wilson’s report was given without factoring in CSEPP
emergency response plans, which are meant to improve both evacuation routes
and community education on sheltering-in-place. Wilson said that once those
plans are implemented, he can adjust his scenarios to account for them and
provide another report. |
