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Wednesday, September 15, 2004

Incineration opponents file injunction

By AMYJO BROWN of the East Oregonian
ajbrown@eastoregonian.com


HERMISTON — Alleging that continued operations at the Umatilla Chemical Depot will harm pregnant women, breast-feeding infants and school children, GASP, a local group opposing incineration of chemical weapons, filed an injunction Wednesday morning with the state Court of Appeals.

The motion asks the court to temporarily stop the incineration of M55 rockets containing chemical warfare agents, which began Sept. 9.

Since then, 11 rockets have been destroyed. More than 90,000 rockets, as well as thousands of other munitions containing nerve and blister agents, are scheduled to be burned over the next six years.

The injunction seeks to delay the process at least until a ruling is issued by the appeals court in a lawsuit GASP filed more than five years ago. That lawsuit, filed against the state and the Army, alleges incineration is not the safest technology for destroying the weapons.

While a panel of judges recently heard the final oral arguments in the case, its decision could still be months away.

In the meantime, GASP and others supporting the litigation, including the Sierra Club and the Oregon Wildlife Federation, believe dioxin emissions from the incineration process, combined with emissions from other industrial facilities in the area, will cause irreparable harm to sensitive populations, according to their attorney, Stuart Sugarman.

“Even if it operates perfectly, even it doesn’t explode — which we think is a real possibility because of its design — people will suffer brain damage,” Sugarman said.

GASP bases those accusations on the contentions of Dr. Michael McCally, an expert witness in its case and president of Physicians for Social Responsibility, a group based in Washington, D.C. McCally claims all incineration facilities emit dangerous byproducts, called dioxins, which can affect people’s health, particularly young and developing children.

“How do you establish the effects of low dose, long-term exposure? There is good science on this,” McCally said.

State regulators, however, said they don’t believe the area around the depot is any more at risk from dioxins from the Umatilla Chemical Agent Disposal Facility than it is from other sources of dioxins, such as burn barrels and other waste facilities.

The depot’s incineration facility is a state-of-the-art incineration facility in terms of its dioxin control, producing hour for hour about a quarter of the dioxins that a single diesel truck would produce, traveling at average speed, according to Sue Oliver, a hazardous waste specialist with the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality.

Keith Rose, an air monitoring specialist for the region with the Environmental Protection Agency, said the ambient air in the area shows no danger from dioxins, from the state’s perspective. However, he said the nearest monitoring equipment is in Pendleton, and that neither the EPA nor the DEQ has monitoring equipment set up in any of the areas surrounding the depot.

According to the DEQ, the depot is required to monitor its own emissions and then report problems to the state, the same as all industrial facilities in the state.

The recent injunction request by GASP is the group’s second attempt to temporarily delay the rocket processing at the depot. A judge in the circuit court denied the original request in August. A decision by the appeals court could come any time in the next three weeks, said the GASP attorney. However, the motion may be dismissed on a technicality. According to attorneys representing the state, the Army and the contractor operating the facility, GASP may have filed the motion too late, missing the court’s deadline.