Incinerator vapors cause resolved?

As the Army's chemical weapons incinerator switches to a new effort, destroying spray tanks filled with deadly VX nerve agent, a controversy over unusual plant emissions may be nearing resolution.

The spray tank project started Friday at the incinerator, located near Stockton, Tooele County. Stored at Deseret Chemical Depot are more than 800 container tanks, each holding 160 gallons of VX. The material is so toxic that if a drop smaller than the period at the end of this sentence were to settle on a person's hand, it would be deadly.

A demonstration test showing how to destroy the spray tanks is scheduled for August, said Chuck Sprague, depot spokesman.

One of two liquid incinerators used to burn nerve agent, LIC-1, remains shut down. It was closed on July 17 "when a compound with characteristics similar to VX agent was detected on the main furnace exhaust stack," Sprague added in a press release.

While LIC-1 is idle, a second liquid incinerator is being used to process VX agent and burn up spent decontamination solution. All furnaces were shut down when the strange vapors were detected, but LIC-2 and the metal parts furnace went back to work on Wednesday.

At first, plant officials were suspicious that mortar used in a recent rebricking of LIC-1 was to blame. The assertion drew sharp comments from activists worried about safety.

"Either VX nerve agent or its 'evil twin' came out of that smokestack for three days, and the Army is trying to claim it's no big deal," Jason Groenewold, director of the Health Environment Alliance of Utah, said in a written statement.

As recently as Monday afternoon, he added, monitors showed the material at 14 times the allowable concentrations for VX.

Marty Gray, manager of the state's Chemical Demilitarization Section, said that if VX had been released at the plant, the levels detected were not dangerous. But he emphasized it was not VX. "We know that it's not VX" because all detector devices agreed on that.

The fact that a false alarm rang does not mean that whatever was released is as dangerous as VX or nearly that dangerous, he said. The monitors search for particular compounds, and anything containing those compounds will set off the alarms.

But many other types of material could have the same compounds — even everyday products.

In past years, when the plant was burning GB nerve agent (sarin), "they used to have false alarms a lot," Gray said.