The residents of Umatilla County weren’t even aware of the nerve agents at the depot until the early seventies, when then-Gov. Tom McCall halted the Army’s plans to ship additional chemical weapons to the depot. Many people in this rural area see no reason to distrust the Army.
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| A depot employee checks for vapor leaks from the munitions.
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But one neighbor doesn’t trust the Army; she believes the safety of her town is her business. Karyn Jones grew up in Hermiston, just 10 miles from the depot. She was as nonchalant about the depot as her neighbors until she took a trip to Hawaii, where a friend told Jones of her struggle to shut down a chemical weapons incinerator on the nearby Johnston Atoll. When the Army announced plans to build an incinerator in Umatilla, Jones believed she had to act. She now leads GASP, a citizens’ environmental group responsible for a lawsuit aimed at revoking the Umatilla incinerator’s construction and operation permits. "No one has any idea what constant low-level exposure from those chemicals will be like," says Jones. She strongly believes that the possibility of a cloud of nerve gas being released into the atmosphere is another reason to halt the project. "In the case of a catastrophic accident I think there’s going to be a significant death rate," she says.
Jared’s mother, Cindy, also is afraid of the possible consequences of incineration. She is one of almost two dozen cosigners, including the Sierra Club, on the GASP lawsuit. "I feel I owe it to my children and their health," she says.
Jared says kids have gotten used to the monthly test sirens at school. "You hear it, and people just keep on playing," he says. Teachers herd the older kids, including Jared, into the gym. The younger kids take shelter in the cafeteria. The Chemical Stockpile Emergency Preparedness Program (CSEPP) spent millions of federal dollars to equip the gymnasiums and cafeterias of the 11 area schools with pumps and air filters intended to create sealed and pressurized environments safe from exposure.
Jared says there was a broken window in the gym during one such drill. The opening could have rendered the system useless had it been a real emergency. He imagines life inside the gym during an emergency: "Stored frozen food for three days, and then you go home and see your two dogs lyin’ [dead] in the kennel."
Jared isn’t the only one concerned about the drills. "I’ve had teachers tell me their biggest fear is running down the hall with their children and [finding] the door is sealed up. It doesn’t matter if you’re six feet away — they will have to shut the door or risk everyone being contaminated and potentially killed," says Jones.
"I cannot see myself willingly coming back to [this area] if the facility is in operation," Jones says. She fully expects GASP’s lawsuit to revoke the incinerator’s operating permits. "I would be concerned driving down the highway and passing it. If this was being built in Salem, Portland or Eugene they would have never gotten away with any of this nonsense. I feel personally betrayed."
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Two munitions handlers prepare to enter a K Block bunker.
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Binder says the Army is proud of the history of the depot and the support it has gotten from the community. "The risks, although they’re small, of continued storage are greater than the risks of disposal of this ammunition," she says.
The Army operates another incinerator in Tooele, Utah, 35 miles from Salt Lake City. In December 1998 approximately 140 gallons of sarin spilled while being fed into the incinerator, raising questions about the safety of operations. At a National Press Club news conference on January 11, 2000, Gary Harris, a former chief permit coordinator at the Tooele Chemical Agent Disposal Facility, claimed that test burn reports were falsified to avoid revealing that the incinerator could not safely burn the agent found in many munitions. "As permit coordinator I was directed to submit modifications to the plant that did not comply with federal law. I reported health, safety and environmental issues to the contractor and the Army, which I was directed not to bring to the attention of the State under the threat of losing my job."
On January 12, the Pentagon said it was confident Harris’ allegations would be proven untrue. "The citizens of Utah and of the United States can rest assured that the Army will continue its mission to effectively and safely eliminate this country’s stockpile of obsolete chemical weapons," said the Army. "This mission will be completed, and the Army will provide maximum protection to the human health and the environment."
Residents of Umatilla have their own reasons to be concerned about the safety of incineration. A mysterious illness struck 36 workers at the Umatilla incinerator construction site on September 15, 1999. Overcome by fumes, some of them began to cough, choke and vomit. Initially the Army thought a possible cause for the illness was toxic fumes created by the heating of materials during the normal construction process. Weeks later Raytheon released a statement saying it found pepper spray contamination in clothing samples, but a U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) analysis failed to confirm those findings.
