Lawsuit could delay depot’s mustard destruction

The Umatilla Chemical Depot planned on destroying mustard gas next year, but a recent lawsuit could delay that action.

The depot is in the process of changing over equipment and procedures to begin incinerating mustard containers sometime next year. The containers, which weigh a ton each, contain mercury, a hazardous substance.

On Oct. 31, the Government Accountability Project, a public advocacy group, filed a lawsuit against the Oregon Environmental Quality Commission and the Department of Environmental Quality, challenging their recent decision to go forward with incineration as the method of disposing of the mercury-contaminated containers.

On its Web site, GAP says its mission is to “protect the public interest by promoting government and corporate accountability through advancing occupational free speech and ethical conduct, defending whistle blowers and empowering citizen activists.” The group is based in Washington, D.C.

GAP filed the lawsuit in Multnomah County Court on behalf of the anti-incineration group GASP, the Oregon Wildlife Federation, Sierra Club and several residents of Umatilla and Morrow Counties.

The lawsuit asks a judge to look over the EQC’s recent decision that incineration was the “best available technology” for destroying the large mustard containers.

Richard Condit, GAP senior counsel, said the EQC didn’t adequately review two other technologies, neutralization and a contained-explosion process called DAVINCH.

“It’s just been a flawed process because of the bias toward incineration,” Condit said. “That really is unfortunate and it does really cause reactions from people who are concerned and critically thinking about this process.”

Condit said neutralization in particular has peaked the interests of the watchdog groups GAP represents.

“Neutralization is proven to be effective,” Condit said. The example he gave was Aberdeen, Md., where the Army used neutralization on mustard agent. Aberdeen finished its munitions destruction in Feb. 2006 and closed in June 2007.

“They were very successful and quickly disposing of bulk storage mustard there,” Condit said. “I don’t see why there couldn’t be a similar outcome for Umatilla.”

Rich Duval, administrator of DEQ’s chemical demilitarization program, said he believed his department fairly presented incineration and neutralization.

“As fairly as we could,” he said. “I think that we touched on everything that we knew about. … I think the commission got the full story.”

In August, the EQC met in Hermiston and voted to use incineration to destroy the mustard containers with filters to capture the mercury content.

During the hearing, Duval admitted this specific incineration process hadn’t been tested.

That’s a point Condit cites as important in comparing incineration to neutralization, which was tested at Aberdeen.

At the August hearing though, Duval said the process used at Aberdeen would need to be augmented, adding an additional step to remove metal elements before the neutralization, so the metals don’t harm the critters used in the biotreatment portion of neutralization. The depot also would need to burn the containers and metals on-site after it neutralized the mustard agent, Duval said.

Condit said there was a public input process over the summer regarding the differences in destroying the containers, but that process didn’t result in the DEQ or the EQC rendering an objective decision about the technologically “because the system is rigged to continue with incineration.”

While the lawsuit is against the regulators, Duval said it definitely has the potential to affect the timing of whether the depot could start the mustard operation or not.

But Duval said the judge who looks at the suit will make a decision on the regulatory process, not the incineration vs. neutralization issue itself. The judge can either dismiss the suit, siding with the DEQ and EQC, or he or she can side with GAP and ask those agencies to repeat the process to decide on the best available technology.

“He’ll remand it back to the commission and say ‘you need to look at this again and consider these things,'” Duval said, speaking theoretically.