Hermiston Herald
Nov. 8, 2002

Witness says Army knew systems wouldn't work

By Frank Lockwood
Staff writer

A witness in a trial involving the Umatilla Chemical Agent Disposal
Facility has testified that draft permits included unworkable major
systems, even though the Army had already abandoned those features in
Tooele, Utah.

The Army promoted those unsuitable designs as "tried and proven technology,'
parties to the lawsuit claim.

The lawsuit brought against the Environmental Quality Commission and the
Department of Environmental Quality had been filed by the groups G.A.S.P.,
Sierra Club, Oregon Wildlife Federation, and 23 individuals, in an attempt
to have the UMCDF permits revoked.

Those parties and individuals oppose the burning of chemical warfare agents
because, they claim, incineration is an unproven technology that will cause
injury to people and the environment by releasing chemical warfare agent,
dioxins/furans, arsenic, cadmium, lead, mercury and other chemicals. The
Army had widely published that incineration was the safest and only proven
method to destroy chemical weapons.

For more than five years the parties to the suit had unsuccessfully sought a
"contested case" or other trial-like process to allow them the opportunity
to provide evidence of the alleged failure of the Army's incineration
program and to test the evidence which had been offered in support of the
Army's hazardous waste incineration permit.

On Oct. 16, 2001, the Oregon Supreme Court case of Norden v. Water Resources
Department resolved a technical point of law which led the circuit court to
depart from previous determinations and to rule that the petitioners did,
indeed, have the right to contest the evidence and make a record before law.
Among the first to testify in the hearings which began last month was Gary
Harris, the former head of Environmental Permitting Department at Tooele
Utah. Harris testified that draft permit plans for UMCDF were submitted to
the DEQ even though the Army knew those plans would never work as designed.

Among other assignments in chemical demilitarization, Harris said, he was
asked to take the permit which was written for Johnston Island, and change
it so that it represented the facility at Tooele. "The permit represented
what actually was at Johnston Atoll," he said. "And then we were required to
completely rewrite it so that it represented the facility that was being
built at Tooele."

After that assignment, they were to take on the "operational aspect" of the
permit - how each incinerator would be operated - and trial burn plans. "I
was there personally on every burn ensuring that all of the requirements in
the RCRA operational permit were followed," he said, "And in addition to
that, when things would go wrong it was my responsibility to find out the
reason why, and, if necessary, modify the permit so that we could proceed."
For years, he said, he was the prime contact between the facility's
environmental office and the state of Utah DEQ.

Harris said he became involved with the Umatilla facility in late 1994, when
he was visited by Scientific Applications Incorporated. "It was explained to
me that anything SAIC said to me was coming directly from the Army," he
said. At the time, SAIC was involved in writing the draft of the Umatilla
permit. "A number of the people that were doing that had worked with me at
Tooele. And I was contacted through SAIC to review the draft permit twice in
late ninety-four, early ninety-five," he said. "I did the review twice."

The design was "almost identical" to Tooele's equipment and method of
operation, he said, and included systems that had been abandoned in the
Tooele facility. "I noticed in my review of the Umatilla permit that systems
that did not work at Tooele were being represented to the Oregon DEQ as in
place and viable and to be used as part of the processing at Umatilla even
though they had failed at Tooele and we had abandoned them in place."

Mustard Thaw Abandoned

Abandoned first was a "mustard thaw" system which, Harris says, he was
directed to remove from the permit. Mustard agent freezes at 42 degrees
Fahrenheit and must be thawed prior to incineration, but the system for
doing that thawing did not work. "Because they didn't have a complete answer
when I was at TOCDF, I was told to remove all mustard from the Tooele
permit," Harris said. "They tore the entire structure down." There was
nothing new put in its place, Harris said, but when he reviewed the Umatilla
permit, the mustard thawing facility was still included in the plan.

Dunnage Goes Next

Next to go was the dunnage incinerator, Harris testified. The fire was so
hot the wood burned in the elevator. They added water, but that just made
steam. "After a number of hours at full temperature ... a majority of the
wood was still left there in residue in the incinerator unburned because ...
everything that was on the surfaces was charred, but everything in the
center of the pile was not burned."

"I brought it to the Army's attention that this ... was actually
misrepresenting the waste stream. And I was directed ... just to leave it
alone and not to bring the subject up," Harris testified. As late as 1996,
they were packing the dunnage waste into permitted storage. The Army kept
the dunnage incinerator in the Umatilla draft permits anyway, Harris said.

Other Abandoned Systems

Harris named other systems with similar fates. One of them, the Brine
Reduction area, Harris described as a "very sloppy operation" where they
were "constantly ending up with hazardous materials on the floor in and
around the building." In pre-trial burns, they discovered "fugitive
emissions," or chemicals, toxic waste, released into the atmosphere outside
of the areas where those emissions were supposed to be.

Yet, the brine reduction area and brine reduction area pollution system were
included in Umatilla draft permits, he said, even though, in Tooele, the
Army abandoned the system, instead loading the brine into train cars and
shipped it to Port Arthur, Texas, to be put down a deep well.

The trial began Oct. 23 and is expected to last until Nov 27, with parties
to the lawsuit trying to prove that permits for UMCDF should be revoked