Dangerous Decision
Last week, the Oregon Environmental Quality Commission (EQC) made a decision to continue the incineration of a Cold War-era stockpile of poisonous chemical agent at the Umatilla Chemical Depot. The decision to accept a plan of action from the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) was reached despite the plan’s admitted evidence that the incineration process elevates the cancer risk to surrounding communities above acceptable state standards.
GAP has been involved in this case for some time, suing the DEQ and EQC to halt the incineration of mustard agent back in November. We also helped spread the word about a less-than-transparent meeting between government officials about this problem in January.
The EQC missed a real opportunity to protect the community and to destroy
chemical agents in a responsible way, considering alternative methods are
available that greatly reduce environmental risk.
We’ll
see what happens next, there are still public meetings to be held in the next
month regarding the burning before it starts up again.
--
Dylan Blaylock