LATEST NEWS
Sunday, September 06, 2005

Depot 'on target' to meet treaty deadline

By HAL McCUNE of the East Oregonian
hmccune@eastoregonian.com



The administration complex and adjacent buildings on the Umatilla Chemical Depot could be attractive to commercial or industrial development once the depot reverts back to public use. Staff photo by Don Cresswell
HERMISTON — Despite some significant first-year challenges, the Umatilla Chemical Agent Disposal Facility is “on target” to destroy the chemical weapons stored at the depot by the 2012 international treaty deadline, the site project manager said this week.

Don Barclay responded to questions about the disposal facility’s first year before the Sept. 7 anniversary of the start of operations.

“I remember the first rocket taking us all day,” he said. “A year later, we just processed the 30,000th rocket ... We have accomplished quite a bit in the last year.”

The first year brought a series of challenges, underscored by three fires while GB rockets were being sliced up for incineration in the explosive containment room. Operations were halted for three weeks last spring while the Army investigated.

No definitive cause was found, although aging rocket fuel is a likely culprit. With additional attention given to fire suppression systems and safety procedures, operations resumed, and the facility has since recorded its most productive weeks.

“Overall, as I look back, it’s been a tremendous success, especially from a safety perspective,” Barclay said of the first year. “We’ve done quite well.”

Barclay said the facility is a little behind its initial target schedule for destroying GB rockets, which are filled with sarin nerve agent, but “overall we’re still in ballpark of what we expected ... We set a target of 66 months to complete operations; we may be four or five months behind, but still in the ballpark.”

The facility has destroyed about a third of the GB rockets stored at the depot. It will face similar challenges when it moves on to rockets containing VX nerve agent, Barclay said.

“For example, we still face the possibility of small fires in the explosive containment rooms while processing VX rockets,” he said.

Destroying the mustard agent stockpile will be the final task, which remains a few years away. But planning already is under way.

The mustard stockpile must be analyzed to determine the metals content, which could affect the processing rate. High metals content of mustard has posed problems at the Deseret Chemical Depot in Utah, but Barclay noted that Umatilla has a significant advantage.

“We have a Pollution Abatement System (PAS), which does not exist at the Tooele facility,” he said. “We have demonstrated that the PAS filter system is an excellent metals scrubber.”

A second issue is “mustard thaw,” Barclay explained. “Mustard agent freezes at about 55 degrees and thus can’t be drained. We may find ourselves processing mustard during winter months, and we are examining options for ensuring it’s thawed prior disposal.”

But mustard processing is down the road. Barclay said the next major milestone at the disposal facility is expected this month when the Metal Parts Furnace comes on line.

“That will allow us to process GB bombs at the same time we continue to destroy the GB rocket stockpile,” he said. “The Metal Parts Furnace also will allow us to process more types of secondary wastes.”

Overall, Barclay said the facility has made a solid start in fulfilling its commitments.

“We committed to taking it slow and easy, to stop whenever necessary, to take care of our workforce with a safe operation, to operate in an environmentally sound manner, to keep the public informed,” he said. “We also committed to leaving behind a legacy of goodwill, not waste, meaning we will consider our project successfully accomplished only when all agent secondary wastes created by our operations have been treated.”

For example, before operations began, the Army agreed to process brine on site rather than shipping it off base as other depots have done. Brine solution is used in the process to scrub the incinerator emissions clean. It becomes secondary waste that needs treatment.

“In the past year, we were able to treat all our brine on site — a total of about 4.3 million gallons as of mid-August,” he noted.

But most important, the community is better off after a year of incineration operations, Barclay contended.

“We committed to reducing storage risk by first processing GB rockets, which represents the greatest public risk,” he said. “After one year, the overall storage risk is down by about 30 percent, meaning the community is safer than it was a year ago.”