MARCH 20, 2015
MINDEN, LOUISIANA
The largest stockpile of M6 artillery propellant in the
country is sitting abandoned at an old military facility in Louisiana. The New
York Times reports that the discarded propellant is slowly deteriorating,
posing a potentially explosive problem to the facility's neighbors.
The solid propellant, an incredibly hazardous material, was
accumulated by a now bankrupt military contractor named Explo. The company
amassed over 15 million pounds of the explosive over the years, storing it in
bunkers and open fields at Camp Minden. As
the stockpile aged, it became too unstable to use.
Worried about an explosion, the EPA is trying to get rid of
the propellant, which is expected to become an even greater risk after August
of this year as it continues to destabilize. The typical way to get rid of M6
propellant is to burn it, but that would release harmful chemicals into the
air, and given the huge amount of the stockpile (the EPA estimates it would
take over a year to burn the entire stockpile), the people who live near the
Camp aren't too thrilled with that solution.
Just this week, the EPA issued a memo approving six other
methods as possible alternatives to burning in the open, including burning it
in contained situations, like a kiln or tunnel furnace, using a microwave
reactor, or using chemical reactions to neutralize the explosives. The EPA and
the Louisiana National Guard are accepting bids from companies ready to use
those methods to get rid of the propellants. They hope to make a decision as
soon as possible.
//-----------------------------//
LOUISIANA PARISH
FIGHTS PLAN TO BURN TONS OF PROPELLANT NO ONE WANTS
MARCH 18, 2015
A photograph released
in 2012 showed thousands of tons of M6 propellant, which is used in the firing
of artillery rounds, stuffed into plastic bags and piled into sagging cardboard
boxes at Camp Minden in Louisiana. Disposal of the propellant, which was owned
by a private contractor that declared bankruptcy in 2013, has been
problematic. Credit Louisiana State Police
MINDEN, LOUISIANA
Just before midnight on Oct. 15, 2012, Sheriff Gary Sexton
of Webster Parish was driving home from the airport when the sky lit up like
midday. He flipped on his walkie-talkie to hear everyone asking: What on earth
were those big booms?
As the sheriff would soon learn, two massive explosions had
taken place at Camp Minden, a 15,000-acre site owned by the state in the pine
woods just south of here, where private companies engage in military-related
work. When the authorities began examining the blast site, they found something
startling: thousands of tons of M6 propellant, used in the firing of artillery
rounds, stuffed into plastic bags and piled into sagging cardboard boxes, many
of them out in open fields.
“Turned upside down, spilled, out in the open, in the
weather, out in the woods — it was unbelievable,” Sheriff Sexton said. “To be
honest with you, I was ready to leave.”
Though the initial explosions were so big that smoke from
them showed up on National Weather Service radar, no one was injured and damage
was minimal. But more than two years later, figuring out how to dispose of 18
million pounds of unstable and dangerous material — who would do it and whether
it could be done in a way that did not compound the danger — remains the talk
of the parish.
The material belonged to Explo Systems, a private
contractor. The 18 million pounds includes some explosives like TNT, but nearly
all of it is M6 propellant, which can spontaneously ignite, a risk that
increases significantly over time.
Officials with the Environmental Protection
Agency say it is the largest such stockpile in the country.
Last week, a couple of dozen people, forming what is called
the Minden Dialogue Committee, gathered at a community center here to discuss
how to proceed. The group included scientists, environmental activists,
government officials and local residents like Sam Mims, a retired Army colonel,
who appeared as an “irritated, concerned citizen representing my 17 cows.” They
had been meeting almost constantly, at least by telephone, since early
February.
The committee was formed in direct opposition to a plan
announced in October by the Army, the E.P.A. and the Louisiana National Guard
to burn all of the M6 propellant outdoors in large trays, a disposal method
routinely used by the Army, though not at this scale. The idea of burning
80,000 pounds a day in open fires for more than 220 days — which some experts
said would send untold amounts of carcinogens and other hazardous pollutants
into the air — was a nonstarter with nearby residents.
“If there is an open burn,” Colonel Mims said, “somebody’s
equipment is going to have to run over me.”
People who live around Camp Minden, for years the site of a
munitions plant run by the United States government, are not unacquainted with
explosions or pollution, but this time is different.
Explo, which had run into problems with safety violations at
other sites, had been working at Camp Minden under contract with the Army to dismantle
bombs and artillery shells into components that it would later sell. The M6
propellant was usually purchased by coal mining companies, but in recent years
the demand from the coal industry began to dry up. The supply, however, kept
coming — even as Explo ran out of room to store it.
After the explosions, the 18 million pounds of material was
gathered and put into 97 separate bunkers to reduce the risk of an ignition
setting off a huge fire. Now, said Johnny Heflin, a rancher in the nearby town
of Doyline, there are “97 big bombs all waiting to go off.”
Given years of natural degradation, accelerated by long
stretches out in the elements, the propellant has for some time been at
“imminent and substantial risk” of self-igniting, according to the E.P.A. But
disposal has been problematic.
The Camp Minden site
of two massive explosions on Oct. 15, 2012. Environmental Protection Agency
officials have said the camp contains the country’s largest stockpile of
M6 propellant. Credit Louisiana National Guard
The Army’s position was that once charges are demilitarized
they no longer belong to the Army, which is statutorily barred from cleaning up
private property. E.P.A. officials responded that Defense Department officials,
which had oversight of Explo’s demilitarization activities, consistently gave
Explo clean marks in quarterly safety audits — though, as one Defense official
acknowledged to the E.P.A., inspectors were always escorted by Explo
representatives and did not look at storage areas.
While this debate continued, seven of Explo’s employees were
indicted and, in August 2013, the company declared bankruptcy. The State of
Louisiana thus found itself the owner of roughly 9,000 tons of dangerous
material that no one wanted.
A funding arrangement was eventually worked out, with $24
million coming from a federal liability pool, and the E.P.A., the Army and the
National Guard came to a formal agreement last October to set up an open-tray
burn.
Dolores Blalock, a retired journalism professor living on a
farm not far from Camp Minden, heard about it on the news. She looked up M6
propellant online. Her first thought, she recalled: “These people are crazy.”
At a December public meeting, Ms. Blalock, along with a chemistry
professor at a nearby university, lit into the officials for making the
decision without reaching out to private citizens and challenged testing that
showed an open burn would be safe. Thus began a feisty campaign, joining
liberal environmental activists with conservative politicians in common
opposition to the open burn.
The E.P.A. had insisted that an open burn could be
controlled so that it stayed well within state and federal emissions standards.
But Ron Curry, the regional E.P.A. administrator, acknowledged last week that
officials had made a mistake in going forward without community comment.
“The remedy was based upon past practices more than anything
else,” Mr. Curry said last week. With the public outcry, he said, “we thought
it was important to kind of back up.”
In late January, the E.P.A. announced a delay and agreed to
the creation of the Minden Dialogue Committee to recommend alternative disposal
methods. Since then, the group has been studying the relevant science,
interviewing contractors and demanding, with limited success, responses from
officials.
Last week, the committee made a final recommendation of six
technologies that members believed would be both safe and effective, including
the use of microwaves or high-pressure and high-temperature water. The
recommendation is not binding, and the Army, which has expressed reservations
about the other methods, maintains that an open burn “generally constitutes the
safest and most efficient way to dispose of these materials,” according to a
spokesman.
But for now, the process is in the hands of the Louisiana
National Guard and the E.P.A., which on Wednesday released a memo
that highlighted the dialogue group’s work and recognized the potential of “one
or more alternative disposal methods” to an open burn. And indeed, several
members of the committee have said they would not shy from a confrontation if
an open burn went ahead.
Still, amid the pine trees at Camp Minden, the M6 sits. When
asked how grave the danger is, with no way to know how old the material is or
how long it was left outside or how many of the bunkers may have let in
moisture, Sheriff Sexton said what just about all of the experts are saying: “I
really don’t know.”
Source: http://www.nytimes.com