Army hoping to restart test burns

This story was published Sat, Nov 23, 2002

By Karen Spears Zacharias
Herald Oregon bureau

UMATILLA -- The Army says it is ready to begin another batch of mini-burns at the Umatilla Chemical Depot, but the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality has yet to give its approval.

"I had hoped to give them permission to start up their test burns before leaving office but they didn't get the reports to me when I asked them to," said Wayne Thomas, program director for the state's regulatory agency. Thomas is leaving the agency Wednesday.

But even with Thomas leaving for his new job in Atlanta, it's likely the Army will be able to begin test burns sometime in December, he said.

State regulators forced the Army to halt trial burns in September after dangerous metals, including arsenic, chromium, lead, nickel, and antimon, seeped into the furnace's stack. The metals are injected into the test materials -- a dry cleaning solvent and an industrial degreaser -- prior the test burns to better simulate actual operating conditions.

Lead and chromium continued to exceed emission limits in subsequent trials, even though the Army reduced the amount of metals spiked into the test materials by 85 percent.

Meanwhile, the Army has been trying to determine why the furnace is not keeping the heavy metals, which can cause cancer, from escaping the plant. In a letter dated Nov. 14, Army officials told state regulators that they believed they had finally nailed down the problem.

"Our investigation revealed some high efficiency particulate filters were loose inside of a tank vessel and we believe that allowed the particulates to bypass those filters," said Don Barclay, project manager for the Umatilla facility.

The Army has asked the state to allow new trial burns to begin as soon as possible. Barclay said he'll be meeting with state regulators next week to go through the report.

"It's basically in their court to decide when we can start. We will work with them to provide the assurances they need. Our schedule is based on when they issue the restart," Barclay said.

The Army is not expected to begin burning the 3,717 tons of deadly chemical munitions stored at Umatilla until July.

 

Copyright 2002 Tri-City Herald. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.