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Approximately 130 federal employees at the Deseret
Chemical Depot's
Chemical Agent Disposal System (CAMDS) learned Tuesday they may be out
of work one year earlier than expected.
Officials from the U.S. Army's Chemical Material Agency
(CMA) told
depot workers at a town hall meeting that the goal was to close down
operations at CAMDS as soon as October 2007. CAMDS, which opened in
1972 as a research and testing facility for the Army's chemical weapons
destruction program, saw its mission changed in recent years to the
segregation and re-packaging of secondary waste such as contaminated
tools and containers prior to destruction. Part of that revised mission
was to prepare the facility for closure.
"We've known for years that we were working to put
ourselves out of
a job," said Greg Mahall, spokesman for CMA. Mahall said the facility
is now scheduled to be torn down by October of next year and the Army
hopes to close the books on the operation no later than October 2008.
The Army's CMA headquarters is at Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland.
Deseret Chemical Depot is located about 22 miles south
of Tooele and
features two main operations & the Chemical Agent Disposal System
(CMDS) and the Tooele Chemical Agent Disposal Facility (TOCDF).
TOCDF is a larger facility and is mostly run by private
contractor
EG&G and other private contractors. About 1,000 people work at
TOCDF where they are in the process of destroying large containers of
mustard agent stored on the depot in igloos since the 1940s. Work
there, which may include dismantling of the entire facility, should
continue until 2012.
The smaller CAMDS operation is situated about 1.5 miles
south of TOCDF.
"We talked about voluntary early retirement, voluntary
separation
incentive pay and looking at the possibility of employees relocating,"
Mahall said. "These workers are highly-skilled and we could use some of
that expertise in similar operations in Kentucky and Colorado. We
thought it was a very good meeting with workers, not contentious. We're
now facing the reality of closure."
Director of operations at CAMDS, Gregory St. Pierre,
paid tribute to the workforce.
"We owe a tremendous debt of gratitude to these workers
who, over
the life of the facility, have made great contributions to our nation
and were instrumental in the research and development of chemical
demilitarization technologies currently in use throughout the nation,"
St. Pierre said. "The legacy is one we can all be proud of."
The Tennessee Valley Authority, a federal government
energy agency,
will coordinate the closure of CAMDS. The authority helped close the
Rocky Mountain Arsenal outside Denver and recently completed the
closure of a former VX nerve agent production facility at the Newport
Chemical Depot in Indiana.
e-mail:mwatson@tooeletranscript.com
Approximately two teaspoons of liquid mustard agent
leaking from a
bulk-storage container valve, were discovered last month following
routine monitoring operations in a storage igloo at Deseret Chemical
Depot.
Workers in protective clothing moved the leaking
container under
engineering controls to a different structure where they will replace
the container's plugs and valves.
In a separate toxic materials operation toxic materials
handlers
replaced a valve suspected of leaking mustard agent vapor from another
bulk container.
The earth covered storage structures are filtered and no
vapor
escaped to the environment. Tooele county officials were immediately
notified and there was no danger to surrounding communities.
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