LOCAL
Tuesday,
May 11, 2004
DEQ fines Depot
By AMYJO BROWN
of the East Oregonian
ajbrown@eastoregonian.com
HERMISTON — The state
has levied its largest fines ever against Umatilla Chemical Depot officials,
with penalties totalling $184,800.
The fines, for a second instance in which workers disabled equipment
during testing of flue gas emissions, were announced Monday by the Oregon
Department of Environmental Quality.
They will be split between the U.S. Army’s program manager for elimination
of chemical weapons and the Washington Demilitarization Company, the contractor
overseeing the incineration of the Army’s supply of chemical weapons stored
at the depot.
They are for violations that occurred on 11 consecutive days in July
2003, during testing of gases emitting from a metal parts furnace.
At that time, workers fed surrogate materials into the furnace (in
place of the nerve and blister agents the system is set up to destroy) without
operating two systems meant to act as safety nets — the Automatic Waste Feed
Cut-Off system and the Pollution Abatement System’s carbon filters, according
to the DEQ.
In March, the DEQ fined the depot officials $33,600 for a similar
incident that occurred over four consecutive days in the summer of 2002.
There was no risk to the public from the errors, said Rick Kelley,
spokesman for the Washington Demilitarization Company.
“It was an error; I’m not going to minimize it,” Kelley said. “But
it was part of the testing process. This is why we had the 24-month testing
period.”
Dennis Murphey, DEQ’s administrator of the Chemical Demilitarization
Program, also said there was likely no danger to the public or environment.
“I don’t have any reason to believe they were releasing emissions
in excess of their permitted levels,” Murphey said.
Kelley said no workers were disciplined over the incidents and the
procedures that created the violations were revised after the incident in
July.
“It was a ‘lessons learned,’” he said. “Corrective actions were implemented.”
He said depot officials are considering appealing the amount of the
penalties levied.
“We do have a question of the severity of the fine because there
was no danger to the public,” Kelley said.