Army: Waste to be treated on site

 Hermiston Herald
August 20, 2002
Army: Waste to be treated on site
By Frank Lockwood (F. Ellsworth Lockwood, now of Eltopia, Washington)
Staff writer


HERMISTON - The Department of Environmental Quality will seek permit modifications "dovetailing" with the Army's reassurances that a liquid hazardous waste, called brine, will be treated on site at the depot - not shipped to Washington or elsewhere, a DEQ spokesman says. Critics have long worried that the incineration of chemical weapons at Umatilla would create amounts of liquid waste too great or too toxic to be processed using BRA, or the Brine Reduction Area systems, and that Umatilla, like Tooele, Utah, would abandon plans for using BRA technology, in favor of shipping the material to hazardous waste sites, leaving a legacy of
contamination.

But plans to operate the Brine Reduction Area have not changed for Umatilla Chemical Agent Disposal Facility, regardless of what may be done at other chemical agent disposal sites around the country, Umatilla Chemical Disposal Facility Project Manager Don Barclay said at Thursday evening's meeting of the Citizens Advisory Commission.

"Each site is an individual site with individual needs," said depot Mary Binder.

Mid-August news articles had suggested the Army might renege on its plan for handling waste water on site at Umatilla, instead trucking it off site, perhaps through Tri-Cities en route to Kent, Wash. Presently, UMCDF is temporarily sending brine to Kent, during surrogate testing, because the BRA is not yet up and running.

As early as May, environmental groups said they feared that the transportation of liquid wastes would not stop with the end of surrogate burn trials at the depot, and that the Brine Reduction Area technology would be left idle.

Joseph Keating, on behalf of the group, GASP, testified during a July 26 hearing before the Environmental Quality Commission, saying, "We agree with the Umatilla Tribes' concern about the Army plan to eliminate the Brine Reduction Area."

The Brine Reduction Area was built to process liquid wastes generated by incineration at UMCDF. The BRA reduces wastes to a salt-like substance.

According to GASP, the Army has known about BRA "problems" since testing and operations at Johnston Atoll and Tooele, Utah incinerators. If the Army did discontinue use of the the BRA, it would be the second major part of the Umatilla incinerator to be abandoned, the first being the dunnage incinerators.

Dunnage incinerators were originally planned for disposing of such things as wooden pallets, but the Army later reported a plan to modify other incinerators to handle that waste. Army spokesmen say they found better ways to treat the dunnage. Detractors claim the "DUN" was simply "inoperable."


Be that as it may, Wayne Thomas, DEQ program administrator, said Thursday that his agency will seek a permit modification to make it clear that the liquid brine waste is to be treated on site, not shipped away, and PMCD's site project manager Don Barclay said the Army had already hired the crews to operate the facility.

Confusion may have arisen because of BRA decisions at other chemical weapons disposal sites, Barclay said, but those decisions do not change the plan for UMCDF.

Concerns increased when Barclay could not "absolutely promise" that no liquid brine would ever be shipped off site at UMCDF once surrogate burns were complete and real agent incineration had begun.

Unforeseen events could eventually dictate off-site disposal, Barclay admitted, but that is neither the plan nor the intent. If the incinerators generate more waste than can be stored and treated at the depot, however, under the present permits the incinerator operators might, indeed, be able to seek another alternative. In Tooele, the Army made the decision to ship brine water off site, because using the BRA system was considered ineffective and costly.

Binder said that some wastewater has been processed at Johnston Atoll, however and that this is not new technology, a claim that critics dispute. The Umatilla facility does have double the storage capability of Johnston Atoll - four 40,000-gallon tanks to JA's two, and three BRA driers compared with JA's two.

"Based on all that we know, we believe that we will be able to" process on site all of the waste water brine that UMCDF generates, by using the BRA facility, Binder said. 


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