LOCAL
Wednesday, August 18, 2004
Safety issue
delays burn
By AMYJO BROWN
of the East Oregonian
eonews@eastoregonian.com
HERMISTON — Officials
at the Umatilla Chemical Depot will not begin incinerating its stockpile
of chemical weapons this week as planned, after discovering a trace amount
of surrogate vapor in the plant’s air filter system, the U.S. Army announced
Tuesday afternoon.
The depot was scheduled to begin moving a pallet of 15 M55 rockets
filled with deadly nerve agent today, and to begin burning rockets Thursday.
Now, incineration has been delayed until sometime next week or possibly longer,
according to Rick Kelley, spokesperson for the Washington Demilitarization
Company, the contractor operating the depot’s incinerator.
The reason for the delay occurred earlier this week as the depot’s
site managers made final preparations for starting operations, Kelley said.
As the managers reviewed the plant’s readiness reports and spoke with their
employees, they found trace amounts of vapor from industrial chemicals had
been detected in the plant’s ventilation system.
Because the officials cannot begin burning the chemical weapons until
they know the plant will operate safely, the industrial chemicals were used
as surrogates for chemical agent, in order to test the operation of the system.
As they were testing the system, an alarm was triggered indicating that “agent”
was present where it was not supposed to be.
“As we emphasize with our employees, the project’s philosophy is
to stop work at any time when issues surface that need to be resolved,” Army
Site Manager Don Barclay said in the news release.
The alarm triggered was within the heating and ventilation system
of the plant, according to Kelley, not within the pollution abatement system,
which collects and cleans emissions from the furnaces that will burn the
weapons and the chemical agent.
The heating and ventilation system collects air from both agent-contaminated
rooms in the plant and from the rooms where employees are working. The air,
which is expected to have some contamination, then goes through a set of filters.
The alarm that went off was between the first and second stage of the six-part
filter system, according to Dennis Murphey, administrator for the chemical
demilitarization program for the Department of Environmental Quality, the
state agency overseeing the depot’s activities.
Murphey said he doesn’t suspect that the vapor, had it been actual
chemical agent, would have caused harm to the environment because of its
early detection in the system. Also, the industrial chemicals used in the
practice trials of the plant’s operations are harsher than actual chemical
agent, he said, explaining that the chemical agent would have likely been
caught before making it through the first stage of the filter system.
“We’re certainly reviewing the information,” Murphey said. “Ultimately
I don’t expect them to start up until we’re satisfied.”
Kelley said senior managers at the depot were meeting this morning
to discuss the details of the investigation that will be conducted.
The depot will also need to complete an air wash of the munitions
demilitarization building to ensure that all surrogate materials are removed
from the plant’s systems before incineration of the chemical weapons can
start.
“We will begin agent operations when issues have been resolved and
we have verified our environmental compliance,” said Lt. Col. David Holliday
in a prepared statement. “We will move munitions when issues are resolved,
and we are comfortable and ready for start up.”