tricityherald.com

Friday, Jun. 20, 2008
Oregon to allow Army to burn waste at depot
By Mary Hopkin, Herald staff writer

The Oregon Environmental Quality Commission agreed Thursday to allow the Army to resume burning agent-contaminated waste -- like rags and protective suits -- at the Umatilla Chemical Depot.

The decision came after the commission accepted a report commissioned by the Department of Environmental Quality that concluded that burning nerve agent, poisonous gas and its waste posed minimal health and environmental risk.

The Army voluntarily stopped burning secondary waste last year after a watchdog group won a court judgment forcing review of the Environmental Waste Permit by the Environmental Quality Commission.

"We wanted to wait for the legal stuff to get worked through," said Bruce Henrickson, a depot spokesman.

However, the Army prefers to burn the agent-contaminated secondary waste at the same time it is destroying the munitions, he added.

"It costs about $400,000 a day to operate the incinerator plant, and if we aren't able to burn the secondary waste while we destroy the munitions, we'll have to do it afterwards," he said.

That will ratchet up the project cost by an additional $400,000 a day, on the taxpayers dime.

A watchdog group, the Washington, D.C.-based Government Accountability Project, along with Hermiston-based GASP, said the state's risk assessment shows that burning the agents poses an "unacceptable risk to public health and the environment."

"The executive summary of the assessment acknowledges that cancer and non-cancer risks exceed the risk-based thresholds established for protection of human health," said Richard Condit, GAP's senior counsel in a statement Thursday. "Additionally, the assessment indicates that the incineration of chemical warfare agents and related wastes may present an unacceptable risk to wildlife and the environment."

Condit said the risk assessment fails to address how the emissions might affect small children or developing fetuses.

Karyn Jones, of GASP, said she didn't understand how the commission could justify its decision.

"I assume that the only way we are going to find out how they reached their conclusions will be when members of the EQC are under oath, on the stand before a judge and are asked the question," she said.

Bruce Hope, toxicologist for the Department of Environmental Quality, told the commission that the department's risk assessment included the results of 10 years of monitoring, which had found no ecological hazards or harm to humans.

Richard Duval, DEQ administrator of the chemical weapons disposal program, said a special incinerator designed to handle the secondary waste was never built after problems were discovered with similar ones at other incinerators.

* The Associated Press contributed to this report.