LOCAL NEWS
Tuesesday, November 8, 2005
Clean-up
efforts going strong at Chemical Depot, but may not be done by 2011
By Hal McCune
of the East Oregonian
HERMISTON — The destruction
of chemical weapons began a little more than a year ago at the Umatilla Chemical
Depot, but environmental cleanup of the depot property began years before
and may not be completed by the time all the weapons are destroyed.
The Army began clean-up efforts on the Umatilla Depot 16 years ago, said
Mark Daugherty, the Army’s local environmental coordinator. After reviewing
more than 100 potential clean-up sites, an agreement with Oregon and the
Environmental Protection Agency earmarked 11 sites that required action.
“We’ve completed 80 percent of those environmental restorations,” he told
the Local Reuse Authority last week.
Two sites containing unexploded conventional ordinance still require attention,
although if the National Guard moves ahead with plans to establish a live-fire
range including one of those sites, little will have to be done to it. The
other site is scheduled for cleanup when funding is approved, hopefully by
2007, Daugherty said.
While most soil cleanup on the 20,000-acre depot has been completed, restoration
of the underground aquifer continues.
In the 1950s, the Army washed out old weapons and let the dirty water sit
in man-made holding lagoons. Toxic nitro-based explosive contaminants seeped
from the washout area and holding lagoons near the center of the depot into
the aquifer.
At its worst, the toxic water spread in a 350-acre plume under the depot.
In 1997, a groundwater filtering project began and has significantly reduced
the plume. The system pumps water out of the aquifer, filters it, then re-injects
it back into the aquifer.
The project may have to continue for several years for the water to meet
federal drinking water standards, although the Army is looking at technological
advances that could speed the process, Daugherty said.
The goal is to be done with the pump and treat project by the time the depot
is turned over to the Reuse Authority, he noted.
The Reuse Authority is the group charged with determining the best uses for
the depot once the Army completes its mission at the depot. It’s also the
one entity appointed to deal with the Army on the depot’s closure and reuse.
The Army expects to finish incinerating the weapons stored at the depot by
2011, after which it will take about three years to dismantle the incinerator
and complete final cleanup before officially closing the base.
Armand Minthorn of the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation
and a member of the Reuse Authority, said the tribes are intent on seeing
the Army live up to its promise to restore depot land to its “original condition.”
Carl Scheeler, wildlife program manager with the CTUIR Department of Natural
Resources, said earlier this year that the depot “has inadvertently created
or protected vast tracks of shrub steppe habitat” that is imperiled throughout
the Columbia Plateau. The tribes want to see that preserved.
Sue Oliver of the Department of Environmental Quality’s Hermiston office
assured Minthorn that in addition to the environmental clean-up effort Daugherty
is overseeing, DEQ will sample, test and “clean close” every storage igloo
on the depot and insure the demilitarization facility is razed and returned
to its original condition.
“The demil facility should not result in any contamination” because it’s
completely self-contained and rigorously monitored, she said.