Milestone Reached At Umatilla Depot

The Umatilla Chemical Depot, in eastern Oregon, has passed the halfway mark for eliminating its stockpile of chemical warfare agents. The Army says the incineration facility at the depot has destroyed more than 1,850 tons of liquid chemical agents. This includes all nerve agents and a portion of the mustard agent stored at the site since the 1960s. It took nearly six years to process the first half of Umatilla’s chemical-agent stockpile because most of the nerve agents were stored in relatively small amounts in rockets, land mines, artillery shells, and bombs, the Army says. It’s expected to take no more than two years to destroy the second half of the munitions because mustard agent is stored only in large steel containers with no explosives and the facility has fewer than 2,100 1-ton containers of it left. In July 2010, the Army said it had surpassed the 75% completion mark for eliminating chemical agents in the original national stockpile.