LOCAL
Friday, August 13, 2004
Air filters denied
for Umatilla
By AMYJO BROWN
of the East Oregonian
ajbrown@eastoregonian.com
PENDLETON — Umatilla County
Commissioners decided Thursday not to change their original decision against
providing Umatilla residents with recirculation air filters, a safety measure
requested by the city’s council in order to decrease their risk from an accident
at the Umatilla Chemical Depot.
The Commissioners said they were not persuaded that the reduction
in risk was significant enough to warrant spending more than half a million
dollars on purchasing the filters. They did, however, express regret that
they could not justify the cost.
“This particular decision on the policy level is not tough to make,”
Doherty said. “What makes it tough is that I’m not persuaded to change my
mind, and I know that decision will displease a number of people, some of
whom are friends, some of whom are colleagues.”
Commissioner Bill Hansell, too, said the friendships he has with
Umatilla’s city leaders, especially with Mayor George Hash who advocated
passionately for the filters, made the discussion intense and difficult.
“I have a deep and abiding respect for our colleagues in Umatilla
city, and the relationships we have with each other make this decision an
added issue for me,” said Hansell, who had requested more time of the commissioners
last week to review the information and testimony he heard then.
Last week’s hearing on the issue was conducted at the request of
the Umatilla City Council who, in June, passed a resolution which asserted
their obligation to seek the maximum level of protection from potential harm
from the depot. They asked the Commissioners to reconsider their decision
earlier in the summer not to fund the purchase and distribution of the filters
to residents in Umatilla and in other areas near the city’s boundaries. Those
areas are near the depot which is storing more than 7.4 million pounds of
deadly nerve and blister agents it may begin destroying next week.
Doherty acknowledged that new statistics presented at last week’s
meeting about the air filters’ effect on reducing risk resonated with him.
At the time, Ray Denny, the planner for Umatilla County’s Chemical
Stockpile Emergency Preparedness program, said the residents’ odds of dying
from a chemical agent release at the depot would be 1 in 1.26 million chances,
if they had the air filters.
Doherty said the baseline risk of such an accident is still so remote
— 1 in 270,000 — the new numbers weren’t persuasive.
“If you are already safe, why spend $511,000 to make you more safe?”
he asked.
In a memorandum of opinion Doherty read out loud, at the request
of both Commissioner Hansell and Commissioner Emile Holeman, Doherty said,
“I believe that the Umatilla City Council is sincere in requesting the reconsideration.
But I don’t see real need or real benefit. It is not sufficient to say ‘we
want them,’ or ‘somebody else has them,’ or ‘the money is budgeted so we
have to spend it.’”
He added, “A recurrent theme has been that the standard for safety
is ‘maximum protection.’ The problems with that term are that it is permanently
open-ended and fosters a ‘blank-check’ mentality. No matter how safe you
are, you don’t have maximum protection as long as there is one more thing
that can be done.”
Larry Clucas, city administrator for Umatilla, said he was disappointed
in the Commissioners’ decision and felt frustrated with the discussions,
based predominantly on the risk analysis numbers.
“Some of the numbers that came out, they were so varied,” he said,
adding that they seemed to change from meeting to meeting.
Clucas, who attended Thursday’s meeting as the council’s representative,
said Umatilla residents are in an area where they feel like they are at risk,
and that’s enough.
“Our position has not changed,” he said.