LOCAL NEWS
| Depot pepares to destroy last of
8-inch projectiles By Phil Wright of the East Oregonian HERMISTON - Early in the new year workers at the Umatilla Chemical Depot will begin the final stages of the campaign to destroy 8-inch projectiles filled with GB, or sarin, gas. Depot Spokesman Bruce Henrickson said the last shipment of 8-inch projectiles will be made from storage to the plant on Tuesday and if all goes well disposal should begin Wednesday or Thursday. "As always, no promises because we never know what might stop processing, but that's our best estimate right now," he said. As of Thursday, the facility has destroyed 13,018 8-inch projectiles. After the last one is destroyed, the facility plans about six weeks of changeover, and will then start processing the 155 mm GB projectiles. Those 47,406 projectiles are the final GB munitions in the depot's stockpile and, Henrickson said, to the best of his knowledge, that should be the end of sarin munitions in Oregon. The depot should finish the 155 mm GB shells by June or July 2007. Then it will begin a lengthy changeover to process VX rockets. "When you changeover from one agent to another it takes more time. You have to clean the whole plant of GB," Henrickson said. "You don't want to mix agents." Aside from the expansive cleaning, workers also will change some of the facility's equipment in order to process the VX rockets. The depot underwent a like procedure when it changed equipment from handling GB rockets to the GB projectiles. Monitoring equipment also will be changed. What's there now is set up to monitor for GB. Sensors will be changed to monitor for VX. When the changeover is completed sometime in October, it will begin the VX rocket campaign. That should run until early 2009. But the timeline has to have some flexibility. "We do anticipate having some rocket motor fires as before because several thousand of the VX rockets have suspect motors from the same batch that caught fire during the GB (sarin) rockets disposal campaign. Of course, those will all be safely contained in the explosive containment rooms as before," Henrickson explained. When the VX is finished off, the mustard gas will be the depot's final campaign. Although 2010 has been projected as the most optimistic year for the depot to finish its mission, Henrickson it's more likely the disposal work will be completed in 2012. But the U.S. Army won't just pack up and leave over night. It could take several years to clean and dismantle the facility in accordance with the Department of Environmental Quality's permit requirements. According to the DEQ permits, the chemical processing facility at the depot will be taken down to bare earth. Henrickson said at the end, essentially, the plant cannibalizes itself as workers will feed concrete and metal through the incinerator. That incinerator will be the last thing the U.S. Army takes from the site. |
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