PORTLAND – A top environmental panel has delayed voting on whether to halt construction of the Army’s chemical weapons incinerator near Hermiston, although it voiced overall support for the project.

‘The more delay there is … the closer these alternative technologies get,’ Melinda Eden, chairwoman of the Oregon Environmental Quality Commission, told Army officials on Thursday.

‘That puts you in a bind,” said the Milton-Freewater rancher and lawyer. “If these technologies work on a large scale, you have a whole new can of worms to deal with.’

The panel postponed voting on a request to revoke permits allowing the Umatilla Chemical Depot to incinerate its stores of chemical weapons until July because one of the five members was absent. But Eden said commission members would not revoke the depot’s hazardous waste and air permits.

A two-inch thick staff report from the state Department of Environmental Quality, which the quality commission oversees, recommends that the DEQ continue monitoring construction at the site and to process other permit modifications.

“The department has concluded that the information reviewed does not meet the criteria established … for cause to unilaterally modify or terminate the (Umatilla incinerator) hazardous waste permit,” the report says.

The commission directed the DEQ to draft an order stating that the depot’s permits not be revoked.

Commission members also voiced concern about recent nerve-agent leaks at the Army’s incinerator in Utah, the Tooele Chemical Agent Disposal Facility.

They also asked staff for more information about a newly leaked document from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency indicating that health risks posed by dioxin, a byproduct of incineration, are greater than first thought.

Army officials are pushing for off-site disposal of the wooden crates, handling equipment and waste water after finding flaws in its secondary-waste incinerator. State regulators want all hazardous waste treated on site. A hearing on the matter could take place this year.

The Umatilla depot, west of Hermiston, stores about 218,000 munitions and containers filled with 3,713 tons of nerve and mustard agents – about 11 percent of the nation’s stockpile.

The Army plans to begin its $1.2 billion disposal effort in early 2002.