State won't stop plans for Umatilla incinerator

This story was published Sat, Jul 15, 2000

By The Associated Press

Unwilling to wait years for new technologies to dispose of leaky chemical weapons, the state Environmental Quality Commission won't revoke the Army's permits for an incinerator to destroy deadly stockpiles at the Umatilla Chemical Depot.

"The alternative technologies in our view are many years in the future on this scale," commission chair Melinda Eden said Thursday. "According to the law, our job at the time we made the decision to grant permits was to determine the best available technology at that time."

Assembled in Tillamook, Ore., for its monthly meeting, the commission was set to vote Friday to formally deny a petition from incinerator opponents to revoke the permits, issued in 1997 for hazardous waste disposal and air filters.

Karyn Jones of the group GASP - Group Against Social Predation - said she was disappointed the commission would not revoke the permits, but she remained optimistic pending court challenges to the incinerator ultimately would shut it down, especially in light of the May 8 release of a tiny amount of nerve agent at a similar incinerator in Tooele, Utah.

The Umatilla depot stores Cold War munitions containing more than 3,000 tons of deadly nerve and mustard agents or about 11 percent of the nation's chemical-weapons stockpile. As the weapons get older, the number of leaks has increased. The Army expects to incinerate them during three years beginning November 2001.

Despite delays that have put the $300 million incinerator nearly a year behind schedule, the commission was unswayed at its May meeting when it heard a presentation on the new disposal technologies by incinerator opponents.

"They're just not ready at this point to take care of the different kinds of weapons stored at the depot," Eden said.

Jones said Oregon and Utah were the only chemical weapons sites around the country using incinerators. The others were going to use the new technologies, which don't depend on disposal by burning.

 

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