Army studies burning additional weapons

This story was published Sat, Jun 3, 2000

By Mary Hopkin
Herald Oregon bureau

HERMISTON - The Army is conducting a new study to decide whether to burn chemical weapons and related trash that aren't considered part of the stockpiles at U.S. chemical disposal sites.

But the study will be a moot point in Oregon.

The Department of Environmental Quality already has given permission for such materials already in Oregon to be destroyed in the incinerator plant being built on the Umatilla Chemical Depot.

The Army is building an incinerator plant to dispose 7.4 million pounds of deadly nerve and mustard agents stored at the depot, seven miles west of Hermiston.

Army spokesperson Mary Binder said the "nonstockpile" materials include weapons or items used to build weapons that may be found at some sites; binary weapons, which are weapons in two pieces that are stored separately; former chemical weapon production facilities and buried chemical warfare material still in the ground, or suspected to be in the ground.

"At some sites, such as Spring Valley in Washington, D.C., it was standard practice to bury weapons in the ground to dispose of them," Binder said. But the Umatilla site was never used to assemble weapons, and no chemical weapons were buried there. The binary weapons that were stored at the depot were removed last year, Binder said.

The only non-stockpile items left on the depot are 73 M56 warheads and five containers filled with nerve agent collected in the 1980s when the army used a mobile unit to drain leaking chemical weapons.

Four of the containers hold sarin and one container is filled with the nerve agent VX.

Six of the warheads contain VX, as well, and the remaining 67 have sarin in them.

The DEQ has already given the army a permit to destroy the warheads and containers at the same time they are incinerating the stockpile.

"The state made sure it was part of the permit," said Trisha Kirk, DEQ spokesperson. "It doesn't make sense to get rid of the stockpile at have 73 warheads and five ton containers left. Our whole point is getting rid of the agent."

Kirk stressed that no chemical weapons from outside Oregon will be destroyed at the plant.

"The state of Oregon won't allow anything to be brought in," Kirk said. "They can only take care of what's at the site."

The new study will be completed in two phases, with an interim report due within 60 days. Mitretek Systems, the company contracted to complete the study, will look at each of the Army's eight U.S. disposal facilities and decide whether the nonstockpile material can be destroyed in the incinerators and if it will save the government money.

 

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