CHEMICAL WEAPONS WORKING GROUP
P.O. Box 467, Berea, Kentucky 40403
Phone: (859) 986-7565 Fax: (859) 986-2695
e-mail: kefwilli @ acs.eku.edu
web: www.cwwg.org
for more information contact:
Craig Williams: (859) 986-7565
Jason Groenewold: (801) 364-5110
Bob Schaeffer: ( 941) 395-6773
for immediate release, Wednesday, June 28, 2000
GOVERNMENT REPORTS ON TOOELE NERVE AGENT LEAK SHOW ARMY'S "SAFETY FIRST" SLOGAN IS MEANINGLESS AT CHEMICAL WEAPONS INCINERATOR
Two new government reports analyzing last month's nerve gas releases at the Tooele, Utah, chemical weapons incinerator show that the U.S. Army is ignoring a Congressional mandate to make safety the number one priority in destroying the nation's agent stockpile, according to advocates of alternative disposal technologies.
"The Army arrogantly defied repeated warning from its own engineers and contractors, independent scientists, and other experts about design flaws in the feed chute to the Deactivation Furnace (DFS)," explained Craig Williams, spokesperson for the Chemical Weapons Working Group. "Rather than fix a major problem, the Army chose to run the incinerator until it broke down, without regard to the public health and safety consequences. This clearly violates the legal requirement that provides for 'maximum protection for the environment, the general public, and the personnel who are involved in the destruction of the lethal chemical agents and munitions' as directed by Congress."
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and the Utah Department of Environmental Quality concluded that the root cause of the May 8 and 9 releases was jamming of the feed chute, a problem that was identified nearly a decade ago but never fixed. As far back as 1991 an Army report on a demonstration incinerator in the Pacific that was the model for Tooele stated, "[T]he DFS gates were not only a continuing source of maintenance problems, but were major contributors to reduced production." In 1994, the National Research Council recommended that before Tooele went on line that it needed to "Eliminate furnace feed errors to the DFS feed system." In 1997, a worker was killed at the Pacific incinerator while repairing the DFS feed chute system, which the Army reported had, "key components failing too frequently."
More recently, several senior officials at Tooele, including the former Plant Manager and Chief Permit Coordinator, warned of potential releases due to DFS feed chute jams prior to their leaving the facility over safety issues. Yet, according to an official document dated July 1999 the conclusion was drawn that, "the chutes would have to be redesigned." but the Army's response was that, "This is not feasible due to the amount of downtime required."
"Actions speak louder than words, and the Army has clearly shown that they are more concerned about cost and schedule than they are public and worker safety, " said Jason Groenewold, Director of Families Against Incinerator Risk, a Salt Lake City watchdog group.
The reports also conclude that Army and contractor staff violated a number of basic safety procedures when they failed to notify the public about the leak until four hours after it took place. Among other errors, employees at the plant's Emergency Operations Center initially concluded that the leak did not involve agent, mixed-up monitoring tubes designed to detect nerve gas, and could not produce key parts of their operating logs from the period when the releases occurred.
"The public is incredibly lucky that only a small amount of agent was released this time," Williams concluded. "The May incidents prove, once again, that safety is a very low priority for the Army. It's primary goal remains continuing incinerator operations, no matter what the cost, to project an image of success that will maintain Congressional funding."
The Army's chemical weapons incineration program is now 14 years behind schedule and 900% over budget, according to a recent Government Accounting Office report.
-30-
 CWWG Home Page |
Contact us: |