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Officials to Consider Additional Studies into Cause of Umatilla Chemical Weapon Fires
Officials from the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality and the Umatilla Chemical Agent Disposal Facility were set to meet today to discuss additional studies and investigations to determine the cause of recent fires at the facility, the Oregonian reported (see GSN, May 26). Three recent fires and earlier incidents since rocket destruction began in April at Umatilla had caused the Environmental Quality Department to stop destruction at the plant, putting the Army further behind schedule. “We had too many crises,” said Don Barclay, manager of the facility. In response, the Army altered its planning and management approaches, putting rocket destruction back on schedule until the recent fires again slowed the process. To this point, 14,530 of 91,400 sarin-filled rockets have been destroyed, averaging 55 rockets per day. This has been well below the pace of the Pine Bluff Chemical Weapons Depot in Arkansas, which has destroyed about 130 per day. “I expected to have twice as many rockets processed at this point as I do. And there’s a lot of reasons for that,” including poor training and errors in planning and management, Barclay said. An internal audit conducted by the Army and the Washington Group, which is contracted by the Army to help run the facility, found that workers at the plant were having difficulty adjusting to weapons destruction from building the facility. Barclay said managers are working to fix problems identified by the audit. The audit spurred “a lot of work force retraining,” said Washington Group’s Rick Kelley. “It’s going to add safety to our employees. It’s going to help us better serve our client.” Barclay said that Umatilla has not been alone in dealing with fires among weapons disposals facilities. All five of the Army’s facilities have had fires recently, Barclay said. Army spokeswoman Marilyn Daughdrill says the Army has been investigating the fires at all weapons destruction facilities (Andy Dworkin, Oregonian, June 2).
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