Voice of the
Mid-Columbia
Kennewick, Pasco and Richland, Washington
Incineration foes want Army
to reconsider alternative
Published Friday,
September 1st, 2006
By Jeannine
Koranda,
Herald Oregon bureau
HERMISTON -- Incineration opponents are urging the Army to reconsider using a process besides burning to destroy the nation's remaining mustard agent stockpile at sites like the Umatilla Chemical Depot, according to a report released Thursday.
Kentucky-based Chemical Weapons Working Group commissioned the report, which examined the feasibility of either retrofitting incinerator sites like Umatilla with neutralization technology or building adjacent neutralization facilities. The report did not address the effect changing destruction technologies would have on the Army's timeline to destroy its remaining stockpile at the depot, or the cost.
Incineration uses high-temperature furnaces to destroy nerve and mustard agents. Neutralization uses warm water in batch reactors to break down the bonds that form the mustard agent, said Craig Williams, director of the working group. His group prefers neutralization.
The process leaves behind wastewater called hydrolysate which "is still hazardous, but not as hazardous as the agent," he said.
While the report determined that Umatilla could build an adjacent structure to neutralize its 2,635-ton containers holding World War II-era chemical agents, officials with the Army and other organizations say the change would require a new permit application and extensive public hearings.
In the mid-1990s the Environmental Quality Commission and Oregon Department of Environmental Quality considered using neutralization on the site's stockpile, said Joni Hammond, acting chemical demilitarization administrator.
They concluded that "incineration was the best available technology for the destruction of chemical weapons, including mustard agent," she said.
The current operating permit for the Umatilla incinerator expires in February 2007, and the depot and Hammond's department are working on a renewal. At the same time, incineration opponents like Williams' group and Hermiston-based GASP have been presenting testimony in a 1997 case, known as GASP I, which asks the state to revoke the depot incinerator's permit.
The report did not look at disposal of the hydrolysate, which has been a problem for a site in Newport, Ind., that is using neutralization to destroy VX nerve agent. At Aberdeen, Md., the Army used neutralization to destroy 1,800 tons of mustard agent and depots in Pueblo, Colo., and Blue Grass, Ky., will use the technology to destroy their stockpiles.
The depot near Hermiston began burning M55 rockets filled with GB sarin nerve agent in September 2004. The last sarin rocket was destroyed earlier this month, and the depot expects to start destroying sarin-filled projectiles in late September, spokesman Bruce Henrickson said. The site could start destroying mustard agents in mid-2009 and be finished with its stockpile in 2010.
Greg Mahall, spokesman for the Army's Chemical Material Agency, which oversees the country's chemical stockpile program, doesn't believe the four incinerator sites with mustard agent will change technologies.
"Things are going well here and obviously the taxpayers have invested a lot of money to current facility," Henrickson echoed. "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."