U.S. Army, Contractor Fined for Safety Violations at Oregon Chemical Weapons Incinerator

The U.S. Army and Washington Demilitarization Co. were each fined more than $80,000 for bypassing safety systems while testing a chemical weapons incinerator, the Associated Press reported yesterday (see GSN, Dec. 12 2003).

No chemical weapons were involved in the test, which occurred between July 18 and July 31, 2003, at the Umatilla Chemical Depot in Hermiston. Nevertheless, state regulators still considered the surrogate materials used in the test to be hazardous waste, said Oregon Department of Environmental Quality spokeswoman Shelly Ingram.

The state fined the Army and its contractor $46,200 each for feeding material into a metal parts furnace without operating an automatic waste feed cut-off system, and another $46,200 each for failing to operate a carbon filtration system.

“They disabled the monitoring and they bypassed the carbon filter,” Ingram said (William McCall, Associated Press/OregonLive, May 10).

Back to top
About Newswire  |  Contact National Journal  |  Re-Use Guidelines © Copyright 2008 by National Journal Group, Inc. The material in this section is produced independently for NTI by National Journal Group, Inc. Any reproduction or retransmission, in whole or in part, is a violation of federal law and is strictly prohibited without the consent of the National Journal Group, Inc. All rights reserved.