East Oregonian October 26, 2002

Body:

n Soil, water, organisms will be sampled before, during, after incineration

By CARIE L. CALL

of the East Oregonian

UMATILLA -- Virginia Harter oversees the scientists who collect mice, beetles and grasshoppers that live on and
around the Umatilla Chemical Depot.

Harter is an environmental scientist with the Washington Demilitarization Company, a subcontractor that is
building the incinerator at the Depot. She has been helping to collect plants, insects, mammals and soil for more
than three years on and near the Depot site for a comprehensive monitoring program.

Soil, water, biota (living organisms) and air samples are collected to determine the health of the area before, during
and after incineration of the 3,717 tons of nerve and mustard agent now being stored at the Depot.

Harter oversees the collection of deer mice, house mice, pocket mice and kangaroo rats, grasshoppers, darkling
beetles, grasses, sages and more. The specimen collections are analyzed to set a baseline for information that will
be used to determine if any incinerator tests or actual incineration of chemical weapons are harming the plants and
animals, water and air on site.

The contaminants the scientists are looking for include heavy metals and other harmful compounds, which are
expected to come from the incinerator stacks during destruction of chemical agent.

The studies are being conducted in three major zones on and off the Depot.

Zone One includes the Depot property itself. In this zone, soil, small mammals, plants and insects are collected at
nine different sites. In a 10th area, very near the incinerator, soil only is collected. Air sampling is continuously
conducted in this area and filters are tested every 12 hours.

There is no surface water testing in this area, because there is no natural surface water there. In Zone One, there
are 12 air monitoring sites, three of which are combination air, soil and biota locations.

Zone Two goes out 50 kilometers from the Depot and has eight collecting stations. Zone Three extends 50
kilometers past that with seven stations.

In Zone Two, there are eight soil and biota testing areas and four of those sites were selected to provide surface
water samples as well. In Zone Three, there are two biota and soil locations near Pendleton and five soil only
locations in other areas near the Columbia River, in Mission and on the Washington side of the river.

"There were concerns from the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation about sustenance farming
and fishing," Harter said. "We worked with them to set up monitoring sites in zones two and three."

Sampling began in 1999 and is done four times a year. Baseline tests, which determine what contaminants already
are in the area before chemical incineration begins, ended in July.

Since then the Army has been conducting test burns of the incinerator using hazardous waste, such as dry
cleaning solution with heavy metals added. No actual agent has been burned yet.

Results from the April 2002 tests have been completed and released. Those tests show that the samples do contain
a level of contamination, though Harter said the levels would not be classified as "high."

The report also measures the quality of the data collected. Quality comparisons for terrestrial invertebrates on the
Depot site, or land-loving insects, did exceed quality limits for arsenic, cadmium and chromium. This means the
data should be used with caution, Harter said.

There also was an invertebrate sample that contained thallium, a dangerous heavy metal, above detection limits.

In the water samples in Zone Two, levels of manganese and cadmium were found to be above detection limits.
Manganese was found in all small mammal samples and manganese and chromium were found in the vegetation
above detection limits.

"The tests, done with sensitive equipment, are to figure out what is already in the environment and isn't coming
from incineration," Harter said. "It's to determine what's already there before anything comes out of the
(incineration) stack, not to determine why the levels are there."

The metals in the environment could come from numerous sources, Harter said, including industrial sources,
nearby highways, farms, railroads and more.

"Humans have more impact on the environment than they realize," Harter said.

The Depot has been a military facility since the 1940s and explosives or bomb testing has been done on site.

Mark Daugherty, director of industrial risk management at the Depot site, said the contaminants on the Depot
property (not in areas in Pendleton and Mission) also could have come from Army activity on the site.

"During our extensive remedial investigation activities in the 1990s, we did in fact find that cadmium, chromium,
manganese, arsenic and thallium exceeded background levels at several sites on the Depot," Daugherty said.
"Primarily in the ammunition disposal area where demilitarization of conventional munitions were conducted by
either open burning or open detonation. These sites have all been remediated as a result of our findings," he said.

Bob Gray, an independent principal investigator for the Southwest Research Institute, is another subcontractor
who is collecting mammals and insects on the Depot site.

"We collect mice in traps baited with peanut butter and insects in pitfalls (plastic cups inserted in the ground). We
are careful of the mice for hantavirus and we try to stay away from hobo spiders and brown recluse spiders," Gray
said.

The scientists want to protect the environment and hope to prevent further contamination of the site.

"We hope we don't find anything too late," Gray said.

Deborah Phipps is a biologist from Kennewick who works for Columbia Environmental Sciences. Phipps has
gathered samples for all but one of the quarterly collection events on the Depot site since the program began. She
was out collecting samples in mid-October and will return in January to collect more.

The reason for all the different, independent participants, Gray said, is to ensure a system of checks and balances
and the integrity of the samples.

The samples will continue to be collected during incinerator test burns, during actual incineration and up to a year
after incineration is complete. That is expected to occur in 2012.

The program costs about $1 million a year, Harter said.

"I think the Army is going above and beyond" by doing this testing, Gray said. "To my knowledge, it hasn't been
done at the other sites around the nation."

For more information on the comprehensive monitoring program sampling events, visit the Web site at
www.umatilla-cmp.org.