by Karen Lee Scott
Staff Writer

Chemical agent destruction processes at the Tooele Chemical Agent Disposal Facility (TOCDF) have been halted due to detection Saturday of a substance with characteristics of VX nerve agent in a furnace exhaust stack.
Interestingly enough the hubbub may be due to mortar used between some new bricks in a liquid incinerator unit.

In the early morning hours of Saturday, July 17, a chemical agent monitor on the main furnace exhaust stack at the incinerator sensed a material displaying similarities to VX agent. Though VX was not being processed at the time, spent decontamination solution was.

Tim Thomas, acting site project manager for TOCDF, said the solution was certified as being “agent free” before it was put in the liquid incinerator. He said the alarm must have been triggered by something else.

A press release from Deseret Chemical Depot (DCD), the area which encompasses the incinerator, noted that a potential source of the “interferant” could be the new bricks which were installed about a week before the monitor’s alarm sounded.

Thomas said after careful analysis it is believed that the mortar used between the new bricks (which was different than mortar used in the past) may have caused the alarm to sound because the “monitors are extremely sensitive.”
Weeds, perfume and even the smell of onions can set them off according to Chuck Sprague, DCD spokesman.

However because the exact nature of material could not be identified, incinerator officials suspended chemical destruction operations.

Gary McCloskey, EG&G general manager, said “our commitment is to ensure that this facility is operated safely. If any of our systems fail to provide clear and distinct indication of any type of safety issue, we will immediately suspend operations and correct or repair that system.”

EG&G is the private contractor which manages the incinerator operations.

“There was no danger to workers, the community or the environment,” said DCD officials in a press release.
However Jason Groenewold of Families Against Incinerator Risk said, “it seems premature for them to say that” because they don’t even know yet what the substance was.

“They wouldn’t shut down operations if it was just some random interferant,” he said.

Groenewold also wondered why a press release wasn’t issued until Monday afternoon, when the incident occurred Saturday morning. He said that fact made him question “how much faith we can really have in the Army?”

Thomas said he was “very sensitive to that issue” and agreed that the public needs to be notified with the most accurate information as soon as possible. However immediately after the alarm went off, both the DCD Emergency Operations Center and the Tooele County Emergency Management (TCEM) team were notified, he said.

“They did proper notification per protocol,” said Wade Mathews, TCEM spokesman. “Basically it was just a routine alarm notification. No other action was warranted because there was no actual chemical release ... They are really good about notifying us about even the most minute thing.”

Thomas said incinerator personnel and state officials with the Utah Department of Environmental Quality as well as representative from the Centers for Disease control are working together to resolve the stack monitoring interferant issue.

Operations will not resume until the source of Saturday’s detection is determined.

e-mail: kscott@tooeletranscript.com