With weapons gone, 180 Umatilla Depot jobs also disappear
HERMISTON, Ore. (AP) - The Umatilla Chemical Depot will end 180 jobs Thursday as work continues to close the plant that destroyed more than 1 million pounds of chemical agents and munitions.
The last of six furnaces was shut down Friday.
The East Oregonian reports about 525 employees continue to work at the plant, which is operated by the URS company. Closure work will continue through 2014.
It took more than seven years to destroy all the chemical weapons at the depot.
Furnaces destroyed rockets, mines, spray tanks and containers.
The last furnace was used to destroy protective suits, filters and other secondary waste.
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Information from: East Oregonian, http://www.eastoregonian.info
(Copyright 2013 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.)
So in thirty years we can see the classified records and find out how many people were exposed to these gasses as they burnt up  and the amount of enviromental damage these weapons caused. the canadian war ships ww2 dumped mustard gas bombs in the pacific ocean before docking in B.C.  wonder how they are doing at the bottom?
My great grandfather helped build those igloos that housed the gas and weapons... I'm glad to see that crap is gone. We don't need WMD.
Hopefully these people saw the pile of materials getting smaller and smaller and planned accordingly for their future employment. Somehow I doubt it though.
Sure hope we won't need those expensive weapons in the future.
This was always intended to be a temporary situation. It wasn't intended to be a social employment program.
Then by all means, what are we doing ending the government's chemical weapons program? Â Jobs are on the line here, people, and families. Â
Which is why the coal miner or lumberjack claims that "we need these jobs" as justification for continuing a practice has always amused me. Â Â
@Festivus There is a bit of a difference, though. Chemical weapons being WMDs, logging being sustainable and useful.
@Saltire @Festivus Certainly I'm referring to the log it solely as a means of continued employment crowd, of which there were plenty. Â
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@Gravity Works! Maybe it's newsworthy because government employment is assumed to be a 20 year deal with better retirement benefits than most private employment. It wasn't always this way.
It was inevitable. The area will find unemployment going up at the end of 2014. One of my students was talking about it 3 years ago and I advised him to start saving as this was not going on forever. He did follow my suggestion and owns almost everything including his home. He is off to college once he gets his layoff notice which will be at the end of next year.
First we spend a ton of money to manufacture these weapons. Then we spend a ton of money to store them. Then we spend a ton of money to destroy them. And now people are apparently complaining that this will put people out of work. Why don't we just hire half of them to dig a big hole and the other half to fill it in.
Those were some nasty little toys. Â Good riddance.
Hope the workers find good jobs. Â They've done a world a great service but a task like that has always had an expiration date and they likely knew that. Â They're probably going to throw a celebration for a job well done.
@negativerep
The area around Hermiston has one of the largest supplies of atropine and pralidoxime in the world and many homes had their own stores just in case.
Organophosphate is number one on the WMD list and Syria has tons of it, much of it was sent to them by Saddam.
The loss of these is jobs is good for several reasons: 1) It means the antiquated weapons stockpiles are being depleted, and 2) taxpayers funded these jobs. Job losses are good when they are funded by taxpayers.Â
@I812 Until everyone complains about entitlements.
Cut, cut cut...oh wait, they cut.
Jeeze, can't win huh?
crap...did LiveFyre change??? We can edit instead of deleting and reposting? And spell check works properly in FireFox?? WTH?!?!?!
@deejm2112Â It's a dang miracle, I tell ya!
Now if only the "flagging" system would work!
@RalphCramden Thanks, Ralph.  Improvement was sorely needed.
@Sundowner @deejm2112Â
I was a constant complainer at LiveFyre about the crappy program they put together. They asked me to troubleshoot it and I sent them plenty of stuff. I got an email a month ago telling me that they had a new program and that KATU was upgrading in a week (3 weeks ago). Guess it took longer than anticipated.
Now we can argue bitterly and correct our misspellings and grammar so that we look more intelligent in our arguments.....8-}
looks like 500 maybe people will be looking for unemployment bennifits
@lee986321  Yup, and will suck off of that for the next couple years. With extended employment benefits, there is hardly motivation to look for another job (which they ALL should be doing right now before the pink slips fly).
Can't be too many openings for folks who know how to destroy WMDs efficiently.