Weapons burning expected to start on schedule

This story was published Wed, Mar 31, 1999

By Theresa Goffredo
Herald Oregon bureau

HERMISTON - Construction of the incinerator at the Umatilla Chemical Depot is about 10 months behind schedule, but the delay apparently won't postpone the target date to begin burning the weapons stockpile stored there.

Officials first estimated the state's largest construction project would be finished by April 2000, but that date has been pushed back to February 2001.

The partners building the incinerator said Tuesday that the date to begin destroying the weapons remains October 2001 and plans to have the weapons stockpile completely destroyed still are scheduled for 2005.

What remains a question mark is how much more it will cost to build the incinerator.

Last fall, the Army - one of the partners in the project - tentatively approved an additional $5.7 million to cover the costs of certain design and structural changes to the project. That would have elevated the price tag from $567 million to about $572 million.

But the Army Corps of Engineers, which is overseeing the construction project, said the earlier $5.7 million estimate would go up.

"It will be more than that," Bob DeMichele, the corps' public affairs officer in Huntsville, Ala., said Tuesday. "There'll be a cost associated with this, but we have to see how big a cost it turns out to be."

The most up-to-date figure for the project's cost is to be part of a detailed plan the Army is expecting to receive at the end of May from Raytheon Demilitarization Co., the contractor building the incinerator, DeMichele said.

"We have a 60-day agreement with Raytheon that they will give us something detailed on how to adjust the schedule," DeMichele said. "We can meet the toxic operations deadline. No one has any concern we couldn't do that. Now, it's agreeing on how that process will go."

The incinerator is under construction at the depot site eight miles west of Hermiston to destroy the 3,717 tons of aging lethal nerve agents stored there. Under an international Chemical Weapons Convention treaty, the Army must have its stockpile destroyed by April 2007.

The Army has estimated in a worst-case scenario that continued storage of the deteri orating chemical stockpile could result in the death of more than 10,000 people within a 62-mile radius of the depot.

Raytheon officials said Tuesday that modifying the construction schedule allows them to remain on track to burn the weapons by testing certain parts of the plant before construction of the plant is completed.

Originally, testing of the incinerator, otherwise known as systemization, wasn't going to begin until October 2001. Under Raytheon's contract modification, the company won't wait to find out if the facility is working right and can begin testing during the construction phase.

"A lot of the systemization activities we perform don't need a complete plant, down to the light bulbs and light sockets," said Chris Early, Raytheon's protocol officer.

"We have a way to build the plant safely and operate efficiently and meet our toxic operation date. We're all happy that we found a way to get there and we're going there."

But Early recognizes Raytheon's current contract modification and other design changes to the incinerator project mean more money.

"The $567 million is the original contract number and the changes in design, including this modification, are going to affect that number," Early said.

Those changes to the plant run the gamut, from moving a wall to adding vestibules or an anteroom to the plant's special air purifying, carbon filter system.

Mary Binder, the Army's public affairs officer, compares the design and structural changes to those any resident might face who is building a house.

"As you get into the actual construction and what you see on paper, in most cases, there will be some modification that you make along the way that affects the time line," Binder said Tuesday.

When asked if the construction completion date could change again in the future, Binder said the possibility exists. "The goal for everybody is meeting the treaty requirements and the program requirements," Binder said. "Those goals and those time frames have not changed."

 

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