Hermiston Herald

06/19/01

Army, National Research Council to hold meetings in Hermiston

By Frank Lockwood
Staff writer

HERMISTON -- Army and National Research Council officials are expected in town this week for an NRC quarterly meeting.

Events will include briefings, an NRC tour of Umatilla Chemical Agent Demilitarization Facility, meetings with local officials and an NRC
presentation, open to the public, at the Citizens Advisory Commissions monthly meeting.

NRC and Army officials are expected to begin arriving by this evening. The schedules include the following:

Wednesday
Two out-of-state Army officials will meet with local officials. The PMCD Program Manager James Bacon and Col. Christopher Lesniak, program manager for chemical stockpile disposal for PMCD, will meet people and answer questions at the PMCD Outreach Office from 8:30 a.m. to 10 a.m.
NRC members will meet with Umatilla Chemical Agent Demilitarization Facility for briefings and a tour of the plant.

Thursday
NRC will receive reports from the national chemical weapons disposal programs, meeting all day at the Oxford Suites. In the evening, the NRC is to meet with the public. NRC representatives are on the agenda for the Citizens Advisory Commission, which will meet at 7 p.m. at the Good Shepherd Community Health Center conference room (formerly Good Shepherd Community Hospital).

Who They Are
The National Research Council was organized by the National Academy of Sciences in 1916 "to further knowledge and advise the federal government." The council provides services to the government, the public, and the scientific and engineering communities. NRC is often cited as an authority for the Army's assertion that incineration is a safe method for disposing of chemical weapons. Past members of the NRC Committee on Review and Evaluation of the Army Chemical Stockpile Disposal Program have represented such institutions as Carnegie-Mellon University, Exxon Chemical Company, Aerodyne Research, Inc., Toxilogics, Inc., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, National Science Foundation, and Los Alamos National Laboratory, to name a few.

James Bacon, based at the Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland, was named Program Manager for Chemical Demilitarization on July 1, 1997. PMCD, the organization he leads, is charged with carrying out the national mission of destroying the U.S. chemical weapons stockpiles at Umatilla and seven other sites in the continental United States and Johnston Island in the Pacific.

Col. Christopher Lesniak, one of Bacons program executives, became the Project Manager for Chemical Stockpile Disposal for PMCD on Feb. 18, 1999. He works at the Aberdeen Proving Ground. While Lesniak is responsible for disposing of stockpiled chemical weapons, Bacon is over all chemical weapons, both stockpile and non-stockpile.

The Citizens Advisory Commission, appointed by the governor, meets monthly to hear input about the incineration project at UMCDF, then reports back to the governor. This month, in addition to hearing from the National Research Council and National Institute for Chemical Studies, they will receive a briefing on the training of UMCDF employees. The public is invited, and time is scheduled for questions and answers.