LOCAL
Friday, June 11, 2004
Incineration likely
will be delayed
By AMYJO BROWN
of the East Oregonian
ajbrown@eastoregonian.com
HERMISTON — Incineration
at the Umatilla Chemical Depot is unlikely to start in July, although officials
said they still have hope that destruction of the depot’s stockpile of chemical
munitions can begin this summer.
The delay in burning is expected to be announced next week by the
Oregon Department of Environmental Quality when it releases the meeting agenda
for its oversight agency, the Oregon Environmental Quality Commission. The
EQC is scheduled to meet July 15 and 16 in Portland, and depot officials
have long expected a decision then on whether incineration can begin.
But, among other issues, it is unclear to independent review agencies
how the depot’s incineration facility will handle its hazardous waste and
respond to certain monitor detections of chemical agent below alarm levels.
To meet the July target date, those concerns must be resolved by
June 24 in order for the DEQ to make an unconditional recommendation to the
EQC that incineration can safely start this July, said Dennis Murphey, program
administrator for the DEQ’s chemical demilitarization program.
“That just can’t happen,” Murphey said, although he emphasized the
official decision to delay the EQC’s decision on incineration has not been
made yet. “You can put the pieces together, however.”
Don Barclay, site manager for the Umatilla Chemical Agent Disposal
Facility, said he, too, doesn’t believe the decision on incineration start
up will be made in July. But he said he does intend to have the facility
ready and the paperwork into the DEQ by mid-July.
“I will not have all of my plant readiness activities completed by
June 24,” Barclay said. “As good as I am, I wasn’t able to hit that date.
The plant can only be ready when it’s ready.”
A special August 13 meeting of the EQC has been scheduled as a backup
date for the decision on the start of incineration operations. Murphey said
he is confident the U.S. Army can meet its obligations before then and that
the EQC will be able to give its okay in August.
“There is still a lot of work all of us are doing, but there’s still
likely to be a summer decision by the EQC,” Murphey said.
Part of the work involved is a decision on how hazardous liquid waste
from the furnaces in the incinerators will be disposed. The waste must be
treated on site and reduced to a salt-like substance that will then be transported
for disposal off-site. Testing is currently being done on the on-site equipment
to determine if it can handle the process, Barclay said.
The equipment must be found okay before the DEQ can recommend startup,
Murphey said.
Also a concern expressed recently by the Centers for Disease Control
needs to be addressed.
In a report released earlier this week, inspectors for the CDC who
reviewed the disposal facility’s air monitoring systems said their visit
“concluded with a feeling of strong confidence in the laboratory, monitoring
and quality assurance staff being fully prepared to support chemical agent
demilitarization operations scheduled to begin in July.”
However, it did express concern about response plans for low level
detections of agent in the pollution abatement system where emissions potentially
could leave the facility.
The CDC report said those plans were not clear during its visit of
the facility or its review of relevant procedures. It strongly recommended
that the issue be resolved before the start of incineration of chemical munitions.
According to the DEQ’s Sue Oliver, the CDC’s recommendation is a
“heavy-duty statement,” despite the CDC’s overall recommendation that the
facility is ready for start-up.
Changes to these type of contingency plans typically require Class
II permit modifications, a lengthy process which also requires a 45-day public
comment period.
All the other recommendations the CDC made were relatively minor,
procedural requests, Oliver said.
“From what I can see, most everything can be fixed,” Oliver said.
Both Murphey and Barclay said they are still reviewing the CDC’s
report and its potential impact on the plant’s readiness.