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Utah Chemical Disposal Supervisor Sentenced Next Week
A former supervisor at the Deseret Chemical Depot in Utah will be sentenced next week for falsifying the results of air monitoring tests, the Tooele Transcript Bulletin reported (see GSN, July 29, 2003). David Yarbrough was convicted last summer on seven counts of falsifying air monitoring tests and faces up to 35 years in federal prison. He is set to be sentenced Tuesday. Yarbrough worked in the Oquirrh Mountain Facility Plant, which was responsible for developing new technologies for chemical weapons destruction. Prosecutors alleged that Yarbrough submitted results falsely showing that depot equipment had passed safety testing. U.S. officials suspended operations at Oquirrh in July 2002 because of inconsistencies found in tests supervised by Yarbrough. Defense attorney Earl Xiaz said during the trial that the records were not falsified but instead Yarbrough was working with a different type of test. Yarbrough himself said that it was not possible to familiarize a jury with the technical workings of the chemical depot during the course of a three-day trial. “The court was total confusion amid objections, rulings and exaggerations,” Yarbrough said. “Then (government prosecutors) used the scare and terror of ‘weapons of mass destruction,’” he added. Yarbrough said that he is being used as a scapegoat for numerous failings at the plant and “the Army has decided to clean house” after disagreements over the correct form of testing. “Additional methods must be implemented to speed the removal of these deadly chemical agents,” he said. “The Army cannot hide the fact that the furnace stack monitoring is so seriously flawed that it is nonexistent,” Yarbrough added. Deseret spokeswoman Alaine Southworth said the facility is committed to operating safely. “This episode with Mr. Yarbrough has been an unfortunate violation of worker trust,” she said (Mary Ruth Hammond, Tooele Transcript Bulletin, Jan. 9).
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