Voice of the
Mid-Columbia
Kennewick, Pasco and Richland, Washington
Depot starts closure plans
Published Wednesday,
December 27th, 2006
By Jeannine
Koranda,
Herald Oregon bureau
HERMISTON -- The state of
Oregon and Umatilla Chemical Depot are starting to plan how they will
close the igloo bunkers that stored the site's ton containers of
mustard agent.
Workers don't anticipate
any
cleanup will be necessary. Instead, they will follow a certification
process to ensure there are no traces of the blister agent.
"The only other facilities
that have completed their processing didn't have igloos," said Richard
Duval, administrator with Oregon Department of Environmental Quality's
chemical demilitarization program. His program oversees the depot and
incinerator's permits.
While other depot sites
store
their chemical weapons in igloos similar to those at Umatilla, none
have started the closeout process.
Until recently, Umatilla's
mustard agent was stored in a separate block of igloos from the sites'
other chemical weapons. This fall, crews at the depot moved the giant
containers into igloos that used to hold GB sarin-filled M55 rockets.
The site stores about 4
million pounds of mustard agent dating back to World War II.
The move means the Army
needs to begin planning how it will test the igloos in the vacated
section and certify they are clean.
Vista Engineering
Technology
of Kennewick won the $1.05 million contract to develop the technology
and handle the testing and any necessary cleanup for the igloos, said
Debbie Lopez-Hummell, who manages the Resource Conservation and
Recovery Act program for the depot's environmental division.
Lopez-Hummell said the
depot
wasn't anticipating much cleanup because no fluids leaked from the
containers onto the igloo floors.
As each igloo is tested,
her
department will create a packet that the state will certify. They plan
to create packets for two or three pods of igloos at a time, she said.
There are 25 igloos in the vacated section.
"We're spending a lot of
time
on this one because it will be the blueprint for what is done (in the
other storage section)," Duval said.
The testing will look at
the
vent systems in the igloos that held leaking containers and the
surfaces in the rest of the bunkers, he said. There also will be some
minimal soil sampling around the igloos.
The Oregon site has had
some practice with a closeout certification. Until May 2002, the
depot's
mustard agent was stored in a metal shed. The munitions were moved into
igloos on another part of the sprawling complex because of safety
concerns.
Once the ton containers
were
moved, the depot had to certify that the metal shed, called 659, didn't
have any blister agent residue.
"We didn't have to do any
cleanup in 659, so we don't expect to have to do anything here," she
said.