Hermiston Herald
August 20, 2002

Army: Waste to be treated on site

By Frank Lockwood
Staff writer

HERMISTON - The Department of Environmental Quality will seek permit
modifications "dovetailing" with the Army's reassurances that a liquid
hazardous waste, called brine, will be treated on site at the depot - not
shipped to Washington or elsewhere, a DEQ spokesman says.

Critics have long worried that the incineration of chemical weapons at
Umatilla would create amounts of liquid waste too great or too toxic to be
processed using BRA, or the Brine Reduction Area systems, and that Umatilla,
like Tooele, Utah, would abandon plans for using BRA technology, in favor of
shipping the material to hazardous waste sites, leaving a legacy of
contamination.

But plans to operate the Brine Reduction Area have not changed for Umatilla
Chemical Agent Disposal Facility, regardless of what may be done at other
chemical agent disposal sites around the country, Umatilla Chemical Disposal
Facility Project Manager Don Barclay said at Thursday evening's meeting of
the Citizens Advisory Commission.

"Each site is an individual site with individual needs," said depot
spokeswoman Mary Binder.

Mid-August news articles had suggested the Army might renege on its plan for
handling waste water on site at Umatilla, instead trucking it off site,
perhaps through Tri-Cities en route to Kent, Wash. Presently, UMCDF is
temporarily sending brine to Kent, during surrogate testing, because the BRA
is not yet up and running.

As early as May, environmental groups said they feared that the
transportation of liquid wastes would not stop with the end of surrogate
burn trials at the depot, and that the Brine Reduction Area technology would
be left idle.

Joseph Keating, on behalf of the group, GASP, testified during a July 26
hearing before the Environmental Quality Commission, saying, "We agree with
the Umatilla Tribes' concern about the Army plan to eliminate the Brine
Reduction Area."

The Brine Reduction Area was built to process liquid wastes generated by
incineration at UMCDF. The BRA reduces wastes to a salt-like substance.
According to GASP, the Army has known about BRA "problems" since testing and
operations at Johnston Atoll and Tooele, Utah incinerators. If the Army did
discontinue use of the the BRA, it would be the second major part of the
Umatilla incinerator to be abandoned, the first being the dunnage
incinerators.

Dunnage incinerators were originally planned for disposing of such things as
wooden pallets, but the Army later reported a plan to modify other
incinerators to handle that waste. Army spokesmen say they found better ways
to treat the dunnage. Detractors claim the "DUN" was simply "inoperable."
Be that as it may, Wayne Thomas, DEQ program administrator, said Thursday
that his agency will seek a permit modification to make it clear that the
liquid brine waste is to be treated on site, not shipped away, and PMCD's
site project manager Don Barclay said the Army had already hired the crews
to operate the facility.

Confusion may have arisen because of BRA decisions at other chemical weapons
disposal sites, Barclay said, but those decisions do not change the plan for
UMCDF.

Concerns increased when Barclay could not "absolutely promise" that no
liquid brine would ever be shipped off site at UMCDF once surrogate burns
were complete and real agent incineration had begun.

Unforeseen events could eventually dictate off-site disposal, Barclay
admitted, but that is neither the plan nor the intent.

If the incinerators generate more waste than can be stored and treated at
the depot, however, under the present permits the incinerator operators
might, indeed, be able to seek another alternative. In Tooele, the Army
made the decision to ship brine water off site, because using the BRA system
was considered ineffective and costly.

Binder said that some wastewater has been processed at Johnston Atoll,
however and that this is not new technology, a claim that critics dispute.
The Umatilla facility does have double the storage capability of Johnston
Atoll - four 40,000-gallon tanks to JA's two, and three BRA driers compared
with JA's two.

"Based on all that we know, we believe that we will be able to" process on
site all of the waste water brine that UMCDF generates, by using the BRA
facility, Binder said.