Hermiston Herald
Dec. 11, 2001

Opinion Piece:
Agencies will let nothing stand in way of incineration

In the dogfight over which chemical weapons demolition methods to use, incineration seems safe here. So far, the Army, the Oregon governor and state and local agencies easily hold anti-incineration groups at bay. In addition, local bodies seem to have lost any resolve they may have had to insist on rigid standards.

Oversight entities have been redefining "safety" in attempt to to make incineration of Oregon's chemical weapons inevitable, and on schedule. Running in the pack are the Army, FEMA, CSEPP and its governing board, the county and city governments, the Oregon State police, most of the people who live here, and the DEQ. Environmentalists don't seem to stand much of a chance in Hermiston.

When an anti-incineration pup gets in a nip now and then, the bigger dogs of the incineration community merely shrug it off. For example, the Army recently threw out the old time-schedules and, to their embarrassment, announced new ones that looked amazingly similar to predictions made by those who have been howling for alternatives.

A little nip will not bother them. The Jan. 26 JANEX exercise at Umatilla Chemical Depot will prove CSEPP has corrected failures that showed up in the May 8 annual exercises, they hope, and allow the Governor's Executive Review Panel to say that preparedness is "adequate." Maybe not the "maximum protection" once promised by the president of the United States, but "adequate."

The ERP, which first met in August 2000, has tucked its tail nevertheless, and backed away from earlier attempts to use an objective, pass/fail emergency readiness test. No safety concern is likely to hold up for long. If there is a problem it will be fixed, but if it cannot be fixed, the rules will be changed.

Says who? Says history.

Theoretically, the ERP could stand behind their tough standards, the on-site-containers and fork lifts could sit idle, parked innocently somewhere outside the grass-and-gravel-covered igloos at Umatilla Chemical Depot.

But the ERP knows this would disappoint the governor, and so they been scrambling, ever since the failed May 8 tests, to undo the damage. When Gov. John Kitzhaber attended the ERP's first meeting, on Aug. 3, 2000, he said he had created the Executive Review Panel to assess CSEPP readiness and to make a recommendation to him. His number one priority was safety, he said.

But there was an underlying assumption in favor of incineration: Storage is the higher risk, he agreed, so the community needs to have the ability to start the incinerator. That has been the real agenda ever since.

The Priority: Begin Incineration

The governor urged agencies and the community to work together, as he wanted a final recommendation in June 2001. "Beginning incineration is the governor's highest priority and he requested that this panel focus on that point," the ERP reported.

From its inception, ERP has equated safety with incineration. The ERP, CSEPP, and the communities have worked hard to help the Army meet target dates. The governor's office does not want state employees tangled up in the federal government's legs.

But the ERP would be hard pressed to approve emergency readiness unless January's test of emergency preparedness is a lot more successful than the failed May 8 exercise.

Worried that would not happen in light of the May 8 exercise failures, the ERP immediately went about lowering standards. As a result, the January exercise will be an easier test. Despite that, ERP members have asked themselves, "What will happen if the new, lower, standards are not met?"

From the tone of the meetings, ERP members appear eager to burn the weapons - the sooner the better.

To avoid hampering the Army (and, perhaps, busting their own budget), the ERP changed standards and redefined showstoppers (those problems that would call a halt to incineration), and indicated a willingness to do so again if necessary in order to meet deadlines.

CAC Clean Sweep

In April 1998, the governor appointed new members to the Citizens Advisory Commission. Before then, CAC guest speakers often promoted alternative technologies, other than incineration.

The new appointments excluded activists for alternative technologies, such as Karyn and Susan Jones. With outspoken skeptics concerning incineration gone, the CAC heard little about alternatives. They heard, instead, reports from the Army, CSEPP, the DEQ, the National Research Council concerning the safety of incineration, project progress, and so-on.

Governing Board Sets Course

The formation of the CSEPP Governing Board in August 2000, further disarmed critics of incineration.

Chemical Stockpile Emergency Preparedness oversight faced a range of problems: role confusion, jurisdictional disagreements, and issues of chains of command. Umatilla County Commissioner Dennis Doherty took over the program's leadership as chairman to the newly formed CSEPP Governing Board.

The governing board immediately excluded the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation from the voting. Tribes may speak, but not vote. The feeling was that tribal representation might make it more difficult to reach consensus.

The new board then moved forward on programs that CSEPP had already begun, such as obtaining clothing and respirators, fixing bugs in the warning systems, distributing tone alert radios, and educating the public concerning shelter-in-place programs, and over-pressurizing certain "safe" buildings, and so-on. But in terms of defining safety, the board retreated on a number of different fronts.

Maximum Protection Abandoned

CSEPP rejected language that they thought made the public expect more safety than they could deliver. The swapped "Maximum protection to the citizens of Morrow and Umatilla Counties," for "adequate" protection. That was in August 2000.

Since then, Doherty has used his influence as a member of the Executive Review Panel to push for more flexible safety standards and more flexible use of the deficiencies list.

Executive Review Panel

The ERP, as early as August 2000, started using the "Master Deficiencies List" of 300 items needed to ensure public safety. The list was to be "a large factor in deciding completeness."

Tribal representative Rod Skeen expressed concerns about "knowing criteria, ways to measure, and actions to be taken." He said that the panel needs to know that deficiencies are resolved and tracked.

The ERP did track those deficiencies, and it became apparent that some of them would not be resolved in time for target dates.

The ERP also created a list of so-called "showstoppers," items which they said would stop incineration if not completed. That list became shorter as items were purchased, systems refined, procedures clarified, goals met, but several showstoppers remained, including tactical communications, medical preparedness, and monitoring capability.

Incineration proponents hoped the annual exercise on May 8, 2001, would remove showstoppers, but, instead, numerous readiness tests were failed.

May 8 Excercises

In the wake of May 8 exercises, some showstoppers were abandoned or redefined in the eagerness to give a positive report to the governor by the end of November. Still, that report did not happen.

The community had failed all medical performance measures, 11-16. The requirements were just "too stringent," the ERP said. A team went about revising those medical performance measures, but the ERP puzzled over how they could fit a new readiness assessment into the tight schedules.

Annual exercises dates could not be changed because they require nationwide coordination, and the ERP still wanted to be able to give a report by June, when trial burns were scheduled to begin.

Evading Bottlenecks

No oversight agency wants to be the bottle-neck which slows or stops incineration. The ERP, which includes counties, several cities, the state, CSEPP, Emergency Management, firefighters, first responders, local and state police, Oregon Health Department, and the governor's office, all agreed to evaluate medical preparedness again during a January exercise, using the new, easier criteria.

Oversight Entities Eager to Burn

Department of Environmental Quality, the Governor's Executive Review Panel, Chemical Stockpile Emergency Preparedness Program's Governing board, all have collaborated, sometimes scratching ideas and starting over, discussing ways to protect safety without needlessly slowing or stopping the project.

The Umatilla Chemical Agent Disposal Facility is set to start shakedown-tests (non-agent) on May 25, 2002, trial burns mid-June 2002, and chemical-agent shakedown on Feb. 28, 2003.

The governor could ignore or overrule the ERP's recommendation, but no one involved seems to want to chance that.

ERP is not the only hurdle that must be crossed. Department of Environmental Quality must assure that the project will protect the environment, the air and the water.

Although the DEQ has made demands on the Army, including the requirement to plug open paths to the environment from "leakers," the DEQ Administrator Wayne Thomas, at times seemed even more eager than others to meet target dates.

At one meeting, ERP member Bob Flournoy said they would not be able to give a positive report in November. Thomas publicly pressed him to try to get him to change his mind. "Are you sure there is not at least a possibility?" he repeated several times.

Rhetoric Deflects Rules

At the June 21, 2001 meeting of the ERP, Dennis Doherty suggested that things on the critical list may not have to be completed before chemical operations at UMCDF begin.

Doherty, as chairman of the CSEPP Governing Board as well as the chairman of the Umatilla County Commission, carries a fair share of influence and his opinion weighs in heavily in favor if meeting the Army's target dates. Some things may not be fully implemented but may be sufficiently resolved anyway, Doherty said.

Doherty, who promoted and implemented the earlier change from "maximum protection" to "adequate" protection, wanted another rhetoric change. Showstoppers "absolutely must be remedied" the ERP had said. Influenced by Doherty, the ERP agreed to avoid saying the showstoppers must be "solved" or "resolved." Instead, they must now be "remedied."

The ERP now says a new 450-megahertz radio system is not necessary for incineration to begin. First responders have said repeatedly that the present system would not be adequate for a full scale emergency, but have agreed to accept initial burning without that communications system.

Not everyone was enthusiastic about those changes. Melinda Eden of the Environmental Quality Commission said she was troubled by the concept that a showstopper does not have to be fixed before incineration begins. An "important" item, she said, can be something that is being worked on, but "showstopper" should mean "not adequate."

Again, DEQ Administrator Wayne Thomas stepped in on the side of time lines. "If we say an item is "adequate," that does not preclude us from doing additional work," he said. An item needs to be "at the foundational level" to begin incineration, and if it is not, then it is a showstopper, he said. More than 200 "important but not showstopper" items were covered, according to Doherty, but no items were being ignored.

In conclusion, the ERP and other oversight agencies have shown a built-in bias in favor of incineration and against alternative technologies, and have worked for months to redefine showstoppers because of that. Furthermore, because of the enormous cost of changing technologies midstream, that bias will likely continue.

With the Umatilla Chemical Agent Disposal Facility already built, the consideration here has moved to money, not merely safety. As a result of that value system, and those limitations, it seems doubtful that the May 8 exercise, the JANEX exercise, or any other exercise, will stop incineration for any extended length of time.

There is a danger that once they start to burn without that 450-megahertz radio system, the government could say, "By starting operations, you have already acknowledged that the new system is not necessary." They can't have it both ways. As ERP member Wanda Munn once put it, "A showstopper is just that. It stops everything."

Listening to ERP discussions, one gets the impression that there are no showstoppers now. For some members, perhaps there never were.