Chemical arms cleanup halted

TULALIP, Wash. – The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has halted excavation at an old chemical weapons storage site on the Tulalip Indian Reservation after four workers reportedly suffered effects from mustard gas buried there 60 years ago.

The four were briefly hospitalized on Aug. 15, after they unearthed damaged cylinders and broken glassware that contained residue from mustard gas, phosgene and chlorine, the Herald of Everett reported Saturday. They said they had smelled a strange odor and one said his eyes were stinging.

One container still had a bomb attached, said John McCoy, a spokesman for the Tulalip Tribes and a state legislator.

The corps says there is no danger to people outside the site. Guards have been stationed there and protective tents have been erected over the area to ensure nothing escapes into the air.

The old chemical weapons materials were found on the former Backup Ammunition Storage Depot, which was operated by the U.S. military until 1947. Less than a mile west of the Quil Ceda Village shopping area, it’s one of more than 9,000 sites throughout the country the corps has decided should be cleaned because they were used by the military for training or storage.

The corps began working at the site in June, trying to determine whether anything toxic remains. Discovery of old chemical weapons means the cleanup costs likely will jump from an estimated $2 million to $4 million.

So far, crews haven’t found actual caches of mustard gas. The chemical compound was detected on items removed from the ground, as well as in the air at the work site, said corps spokesman Steve Cosgrove.

“We found the residue when we started digging,” he said. “If nobody digs, it won’t be in the air. It’s just a residue, so it’s not like there was mustard gas released into the air. It isn’t anything that would be active.”

The digging is expected to resume in October, with air being filtered in and out of the site to protect the crews, he said.

During World War II, the federal government claimed more than 2,000 acres of Tulalip land for its own use. Bombs and chemical weapons were stored on a 676-acre section of the site, according to federal documents. The rest of the land was used for training, sometimes involving chemical weapons.

The military kept poor records of how the Tulalip site was used, and few people are still alive who remember what happened there. The corps conducted an investigation between 1994 and 1997 and determined that chemical agents were probably buried there.