Enviros target dairy industry

A U.S. District Court Judge ruled a few weeks ago in favor of the U.S. Army and dismissed on all counts a case seeking to halt shipments of caustic waste water. The Army was shipping the water to a treatment facility in Texas from an Army plant in Indiana that is destroying the nerve agent VX.

The court ruled that the caustic waste water, known as hydrolysate, is a hazardous waste, not a munition or chemical agent. The judge also said the Army adequately considered the risks inherent in transporting the waste to Texas for disposal.

With the Umatilla Chemical Depot still destroying VX-filled land mines, at least for another week or so, one might wonder if such shipments are something we should be concerned about.

Bruce Henrickson, a public affairs officer at the Umatilla Chemical Depot, assures us we shouldn’t. The Army doesn’t ship hydrolysate from the Depot because there’s none to ship, he says.

But if the Army is destroying VX munitions here, why is that any different than destroying them at Newport, Ind.? There’s a big difference, Henrickson says. The Indiana plant used neutralization to destroy its VX nerve agent until workers completed the job on Oct. 25.

The Umatilla Chemical Agent Disposal Facility uses high-temperature incineration to destroy agents and munitions. That’s why hydrolysate is not a byproduct of the process here.

The process at the Depot does leave a brine salt product, Henrickson says, but workers treat it on site as much as possible. If workers are unable to keep up, the state Department of Environmental Quality allows shipping the brine to another disposal facility. Henrickson said such shipments have been infrequent.

The munitions destruction at the Depot has been a controversial topic during the past decade, but it’s apparent most people are comfortable with the safety features and the progress workers have made there. As of last week, workers at the disposal facility had destroyed more than 76 percent of the VX land mines and more than 36 percent of the Depot’s total chemical agent.

The project is going well and we should applaud those who work so tirelessly to keep our community, our state, our region and our nation safe.

Unsigned editorials reflect the opinions of Editor Dean Brickey and General Manager Jeanne Hoffman. Other columns, letters and cartoons on this page express the opinions of the authors and not necessarily those of the newspaper.