The U.S. Army may start incinerating chemical weapons in Northeast Oregon one week from today if Oregon regulators give their approval Friday.

But incinerator foes pledge to ask a judge, as soon as today, to block the burning of some of the country's most dangerous weapons.

The rush to file suits and fire furnaces responds to Friday's Oregon Environmental Quality Commission meeting, scheduled for 12:30 p.m. at Hermiston's Good Shepherd Medical Center. Commissioners will vote whether the U.S. Army has met state environmental rules and can begin destroying the 7.4 million pounds of chemical weapons stored at the Umatilla Chemical Depot. The commissioners will take no public comment before the vote but will meet with the public afterward.

Department of Environmental Quality staff will recommend that the commission let the incineration begin, said Dennis Murphey, administrator of the department's Umatilla Chemical Demilitarization Program. Observers, including the Army, expect the commission to agree.

"All indications point in that direction," said Mary Binder, a depot spokeswoman.

The depot, which borders Interstate 84 several miles west of Hermiston, stores about 12 percent of the nation's historic stockpile of chemical weapons. Nearly two-thirds of Umatilla's cache is distilled sulfur mustard, or HD, which can blister the skin, eyes and lungs. The depot also stores tons of two pesticide-like nerve agents: GB, also called sarin, and VX.

The depot complex includes several buildings and incinerators, built at a cost of about $400 million over four years. The facility is one of five incinerators the Army has built to destroy most of the country's chemical weapons; four smaller storage sites will use chemical techniques to destroy the rest. Once it starts, Oregon's incinerator will take at least six years to destroy its weapons, and the total cost of Umatilla's disposal program should top $2 billion.

If it gets state approval, the Army hopes to move a pallet of 15 rockets armed with sarin from a concrete bunker to the incinerator building on next Wednesday, Binder said.

If that goes smoothly, one rocket could be "drained and chopped" next Thursday morning, she said. Machinery would siphon the nerve agent into a holding tank, Binder said, where it probably would sit about a month, until a liquid chemical incinerator starts up. The remaining rocket parts would enter a separate furnace designed to destroy the weapon's fuel and any nerve agent that remains on the metal parts.

Opponents ready, too

But not if Karyn Jones has her way.

Jones leads Gasp, an activist group that has fought the incinerator for more than eight years. That opposition, along with construction delays and environmental regulations, has delayed the start of incineration for years. In fact, when the state approved building an incinerator in 1997, the Army said all weapons would be burned by late 2003.

"We're not ready to give up," Jones said. "And even if they start, we're not giving up."

On Wednesday, a Gasp lawyer, Stuart Sugarman, said he plans this morning to file a motion for an injunction against starting the incinerators. The group has an Aug. 20 date in court for a judge to hear an appeal of a case filed in 1997, just after construction crews broke ground on the incinerator. That suit claimed that incineration is more dirty and dangerous than other ways to destroy chemical weapons, such as chemically treating them, as several U.S. sites plan to do.

Gasp and fellow environmental groups have other worries about the project: Oregon has changed some environmental rules initially placed on the project, they note, and the Army has changed the incinerator's design from its early plans. Jones also worries that officials will not sufficiently monitor for chemical leaks or health problems.

Wins for opponents

Incinerator opponents have scored some wins. Last month, a Multnomah County circuit judge ordered a change to the Army's permit detailing workers' rights to blow the whistle on safety violations without retribution. The Army and the DEQ made that change this week, though in a less public and formal way than Gasp had hoped.

Others hold more mixed views of the project. The Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation officially supports starting the incinerator, noted Rod Skeen, who works on depot issues for the tribes.

But tribal leaders remain wary that evacuation plans might be strained when the area is hosting lots of outsiders, such as during the Umatilla County Fair, which runs through Saturday. Skeen also said the tribe is worried about pollution and has been monitoring to set baseline levels of pollution around to depot so they can better watch for changes.

Meanwhile, many in the area -- including several local city and county officials who commented on the idea in May and June -- support starting the incinerator. At that point, the Army and its contractor still had several projects to finish before they could start. Those were finished with this week's changes addressing whistle-blowers, DEQ staff said.

"The plant is ready," said Rick Kelley, a spokesman for Washington Demilitarization Co., the contractor running the incinerator. "The procedures are in place, and the people are ready to go."

Responders prepared

Emergency management officials in Morrow and Umatilla counties added that they also are ready for the incinerator to start. They recently finished a special communications radio system, which would let many workers talk in the event of a disaster -- the final major piece of their preparedness plan.

Kelley and Binder both stressed that the incinerator would work gradually at first. They added that other incinerators have had to stop often for mechanical adjustments in the early weeks of operation, as they say is common for large industrial plants.

"This is a very, very, very slow, step-by-step process, where we'll gradually increase from one rocket to, many months from now, 24-7 processing," Binder said.

But Binder added that legal moves could well delay the start of incineration from a few weeks to a few months. That happened when the Army started incinerators at sites in Utah and Alabama, she said.

Andy Dworkin: 503-221-8239; andydworkin@news.oregonian.com