LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

Expose burner ‘cover-up’

Editor:

Several years ago, Mr. Tom Cramer and I (David Yarbrough) reported serious problems to our superiors concerning unsafe and unreliable sampling at the chemical agent incinerator stacks in Tooele and throughout the nationwide program.

Colonel Cooper, Director Cormier at DCD and Dr. Ferritter at the program headquarters made the determination to ignore our professional and experienced report of these problems, which eventually resulted in our removal and my incarceration.

Volumes of public records in the media, Utah state public meetings, memos to Col. Cooper, the Inspector General, Attorney Brunsen, Director Garret (Anniston, Ala.), General Kern (Aberdeen, Md.), Delbert Bunch (Aberdeen), Mike Parker (Aberdeen), all Tooele County Commissioners, the state Citizens Advisory Council, Ms. Renee’ Williams (Deseret Chemical Depot), and many others which clearly and consistently highlighted the problems with sampling the agent furnace stacks have been ignored and covered up.

We have clearly warned that unless the trained eye of Mr. Cramer be allowed to observe the sampling, the atrocities would be hidden by sophisticated procedures such as hiding true calibration points, flow rates, sample probe inlet positions, syringe volumes, data reporting, agent gates, and many other procedures that extend to the same atrocities existing in the confirmation sampling system.

I have stood my ground even from within this prison. The recent problems were reluctantly and belatedly made public by the Army. They include secrecy and the appearance of a cover-up that can no longer be ignored. The continued operation of the plant at Tooele since being caught by the public is inexcusable!

I am in prison because the Army chose to put me here so they could ramrod the chemical stockpile through the furnace regardless of the safety problems. For at least four years, the Army has refused again and again to allow us to observe this operation because they know it is faulty, and the Army knows that the incinerator should be shut down.

The sampling operators at the Tooele incinerator where this atrocity occurred do not deserve to be threatened with criminal indictments and prison sentences. Each one of them did exactly as they have been trained and expected to do for many years so the Army and their contractors could continue incineration. The Army program for chemical agent demilitarization is seriously fraudulent, and they are the true criminals for ignoring problems and continuing to use incineration while covering up these sampling problems to stay on schedule.

At Tooele, both incinerators with their furnace stack sampling methods, procedures and all documentation should be investigated in conjunction with Attorney Mick Harrison and Mr. Tom Cramer, an experienced and professional expert for furnace stack sampling. An investigation guided and limited by the Army or by the contractors who operate the TOCDF and DCD/OMF furnace stacks is pure fraud and a continued cover-up.

Furnace stack sampling atrocities are the most threatening to the workers, the community and the environment, but several agent sampling problems have been reported previously and not corrected. In addition, several management abuses have also been reported and ignored that range from contractors hiring a director’s teenage son, through hazard/environmental pay abuses, to cover-up of theft at the Deseret Chemical Deport, as well as misuse of the certifying official authority in the Chemical Personnel Reliability program to force and persuade and threaten employees to accept these atrocities without reporting the problems.

I sincerely report that you must act quickly to stop these obvious and well-documented atrocities. There is no excuse for the chemical agent incineration program to proceed for one more minute down the same road as nuclear testing in southern Utah and Nevada. Tooele County and all counties in the country deserve to have these deadly chemicals destroyed by one of the proven and safer methods of destruction that does not include incineration.

You as an individual with responsibility or as a resident close to any of the incinerators must demand for this charade in deadly chemical destruction to end. Please respond to your Army leaders, senators, congressmen and newspapers.

David Yarbrough
Florence, Colo.