Tri-City Herald
October 6, 2003

Umatilla Chemical Depot resumes test burning

By Kathleen Gilstrap
Herald Oregon bureau

HERMISTON -- Test burning in a furnace that eventually will destroy explosives and rockets loaded with nerve and mustard agents began a few weeks ago at the Umatilla Chemical Depot.

The Oregon Department of Environmental Quality shut down the deactivation furnace in June because the levels of antimony and nickel emitted exceeded the amounts allowed by the state. The levels posed no danger to people or the environment, health officials said then.

Sue Oliver, spokeswoman for the DEQ, said the agency gave Washington Demilitarization Co., the firm handling the incineration of the chemicals and weapons stored at the depot, permission to resume burning in the furnace Aug. 22.

The company uses industrial chemicals during the so-called surrogate burns.

Crindalyn Lyster, a representative for Washington Demilitarization, said the deactivation furnace is being tested with ethyl glycol, titanium dioxide, metal oxide, monochlorobenzene and hexachloroethane. Those are chemicals that simulate what will happen when the rockets and explosives are incinerated. The surrogate burning will last for 16 days.

Tests run during surrogate burns determine the equipment's operating parameters, Lyster said.

The depot, seven miles west of Hermiston, stores 220,604 munitions and containers filled with 7.4 million pounds of deadly nerve and mustard agents. The aging weapons have been stored at the depot since the early 1960s and are slated for destruction.

Washington Demilitarization officials said incinerators and staff will be ready to begin burning nerve agents and munitions in December, but they anticipate that burning won't start until early next year.

The company must have approval from the Oregon Environmental Quality Commission before incineration starts. That process will include public hearings.

A surrogate burn in one of two liquid incinerators at the depot was completed in early February. Tests on the other one, and on the metal parts furnace, will take place later this year.

The metal parts furnace was shut down by DEQ in late August because materials were burned without the pollution abatement system carbon filters operating.

Oliver said the company was given permission to resume burning Sept. 19.