800 attend Umatilla celebration for Depot

This story was published Aug. 5, 2002

By Mary Hopkin
Herald Oregon bureau

HERMISTON - A celebration marking the completion of the Umatilla Chemical Agent Disposal Facility drew a crowd of more than 800 Monday.

U.S. Sen. Gordon Smith, R-Ore., and U.S. Rep. Greg Walden, R-Ore., joined a handful of Army and Washington Demilitarization Co. executives to cut the ribbon to the massive incinerator plant that will be used to destroy the 3,717 tons of deadly nerve and mustard agents stored at the Umatilla Chemical Depot.

Dr. Kenneth Oscar, assistant secretary of the Army, said incineration of the weapons stored at the depot had global significance.

"No soldier will ever again face chemical weapons on the battlefield," Oscar said. "Maintaining these terrible chemical weapons was once the world's way of attaining peace. Destroying the weapons is now our way of keeping it."

Incineration is the safest and quickest way to destroy the weapons, he said.

Ironically, the ceremony was held the same day the Deseret Chemical Depot, in Tooele, Utah, announced that nerve gas had leaked from a transport container over the weekend. Harold Oliver, civilian executive for the Utah depot, said the nerve agent sarin escaped while the weapons were being transported in a ton container from the storage site to the incinerator. Nobody was injured in the accident and no sarin was released into the atmosphere, officials said.

But the leaks have been happening more frequently and are a signal the weapons are degrading.

And that's another reason they need to be destroyed, said James L. Bacon, the Army's program manager for chemical demilitarization.

"Today we embark on a new mission," Bacon said. "That mission is the elimination of the risk posed by the storage of aging chemical weapons."

Bacon noted the milestones the Chemical Demilitarization Program has seen over the past year.

The last chemical weapon stored at the Johnston Island Atoll was incinerated in November.

On June 8, the Anniston Chemical Agent Disposal Facility in Anniston, Ala., was completed.

As of Aug. 5, The Tooele Chemical Agent Disposal facility had destroyed 38.6 percent of its stockpile - more chemical than that stored at the Umatilla Chemical Depot.

Construction of another incinerator plant, at Pine Bluff, Ark., is about 60 percent complete, and two more incinerators, in Aberdeen, Md., and Newport, Ind., are under construction.

"We have learned many lessons during our construction and disposal operations," Bacon said. "We will continue to apply these lessons to current and future disposal activities."

Smith said he was comforted by a tour of the plant.

"It's my strong impression that no expense has been spared for this project," Smith said.

Smith said he has supported federal funding for the project since he took office in 1997. Since the Pendleton native has so many of his friends and neighbors living near the depot, he is especially concerned that incineration is done as quickly and safely as possible, he said.

The Army had expected to start destroying weapons at the plant in July 2002.

But engineering changes, permit modifications and construction delays caused by a series of bomb threats pushed the incineration date to February 2003.

In the meantime, the Army will be testing the plant to make sure it is all working properly, said Mary Binder, Army spokeswoman.

Construction of the Umatilla facility began in June 1997 and was completed May 10.

 

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