LATEST NEWS
Friday, June 03, 2005
Incinerator restart
'significantly closer'
By HAL
MCCUNE of the East Oregonian
hmccune@eastoregonian.com
HERMISTON — An intensive
review by a rocket task force organized by the Army has moved the Umatilla
Chemical Agent Disposal Facility “significantly closer” to resuming incineration
operations, the administrator of the state’s chemical demilitarization program
said this morning.
The facility likely will be able to resume processing rockets within
a few days, said Dennis Murphey of the state Department of Environmental Quality.
The rocket task force was organized after the DEQ issued a stop-work
order May 18, following the third rocket fire in six weeks at the Umatilla
Chemical Depot.
In a preliminary report from one arm of the task force, the Corps
of Engineers, a review of the structure of the Explosive Containment Room
where the fires occurred showed its “structural integrity,” including its
ability to contain an explosion, is not compromised by repeated incidents
such as the rocket fires.
Those fires involved inadvertent ignition of propellant remaining
in the rockets as they were being cut up for incineration, resulting in a
low-order explosion and fire.
The review also concluded that the “performance and integrity” of
the duct system, blast valves, isolation valves and filters associated with
the room remained intact during the incidents.
The fires have an insignificant impact because “the design, construction
and protection of the ECRs makes the risk of a room, building or heating,
venting, air conditioning fire very low.”
Consequently, an increased frequency of fires in the containment
room would not put the public at increased risk during continued disposal
of M55 rockets.
No workers were injured or threatened during the fires and there
was no danger of a chemical agent release.
A preliminary assessment also indicated that the rockets remain
stable in storage and through the routine handling operations that bring
them to the disposal process, the U.S. Army Chemical Materials Agency reported.
At this point, all fires have been associated only with rockets
involved in the actual shearing/disposal process. Murphey met Thursday in
Portland with representatives of the Army and senior officials of the Washington
Group, which operates the incinerator facility, to review the progress of
the task force.
“Hopefully we’re getting significantly closer” to resuming operations,
he said this morning. He characterized the meeting as a “good discussion”
that lasted a couple hours and provided an opportunity to review “what their
response has been, actions already taken and still under way.”
The Army and Washington Group also have provided the DEQ with a
significant amount of documents the state had requested regarding the fires
and their investigation, he said.
Murphey said the review since the shutdown has focused on three
areas: the safety of the facility in case of future fires, the investigation
into the cause of the fires and identification of actions already taken or
under consideration to reduce the frequency of the fires or mitigate their
consequences.
The task force also has been investigating two similar fires at
Pine Bluff Chemical Agent Disposal Facility in Arkansas. Other disposal sites
have had rocket fires, but the frequency of the recent fires, in proportion
to the number of rockets destroyed, alarmed the Army and DEQ.