Defense Environment Alert

an exclusive biweekly report on defense policies for cleanup, compliance and pollution prevention

Vol. 15, No. 12

June 12 , 2007

ACTIVISTS RESIGNED TO ARMY INCINERATION OF CHEMICAL AGENT ROCKETS

Environmentalist campaigners will not fight Army plans to continue disposal of chemical agent-filled rockets using incineration despite their longstanding opposition to the practice. and will not attempt fresh legal action, an activist source says.

Campaigners have fought against the practice for over a decade, launching a string of lawsuits against the Defense Department on the grounds that incineration is unsafe and cannot guarantee elimination of all harmful agents in aging chemical munitions now slated for destruction. But because the courts have found in favor of the military previously, further legal action likely would not succeed, says the source.

The Army has recently applied for a renewal of its approval, which expires July 6, to incinerate M55 rockets containing harmful polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), and EPA's initial evaluation indicated no regulatory objections to continued incineration. In a May 25 Federal Register notice, the agency states that "based on the trial burn results, EPA believes the conditions in the current TSCA approval are necessary and adequate to ensure proper disposal of PCBs in compliance with TSCA." The notice invited comments until June Il. The notice is available on InsideEPA.com. See page 2 for details.

These trial burn data, obtained during a series of experimental burns of the PCB-containing material, are at the heart of citizen activist objections to the process. A source with the Chemical Weapons Working Group (CWWG) argues that the data are not reflective of the true operating conditions of incinerators, and therefore the authorization should not be renewed.

"We believe it (incineration) is in violation of TSCA," says the source, who claims that the system of using trial burns lasting 3 hours at a time is "absolutely ludicrous" as it does not reproduce the conditions of continuous operation. The source adds that although continuous monitoring systems for smokestacks are available, the Army will not use them and EPA also will not require their use. CWWG backs alternatives to incineration such as super-critical oxidation or wet-air oxidation, and has previously sued to prevent incineration of PCB-containing material, but has lost on the grounds that the military has managed to pass the standards required in trial burns. The group argues that despite failing individual trial bums in the past, the military has been allowed to "cherry-pick" and continue trials until they complete a run of four three-hour bums that meet emission standards with a destruction and removal efficiency of 99.9999 percent.

CWWG has not submitted comments to EPA on the renewal notice, however, and will not take legal action, given the slim chance of winning a case, the source says. Only two facilities are still burning material from M55 rockets - Pine Bluff, AR, and Umatilla, OR - and would be covered by the renewed permit. Other sites covered by the current approval, Tooele, UT, and Anniston, AL, have already finished incinerating their stocks of M55 rockets.