The House Concurrent Resolution to ban the open tray burn method of munitions disposal in the state of Louisiana will likely be filed by the end of this week Rep. Gene Reynolds, D-Minden, said.
“We have DEQ, the governor’s office, the state police, the fire marshal’s office and others chiming in on it right now,” he said, “and we’re going to try to see if we can combine the three versions and get it filed. Then we can get busy and get it on out of here fairly quickly.”
He says concerns arose about some of the language in the original draft.
“Some (of the concerns) were of unintended consequences that might deal with doing away with materials other than M6,” he said. “It was broadly written, so we had to be more specific to Minden and M6 rather than a wide variety of the materials. That was the main hang up. I think we’ll get it worked out.”
It has not been issued a number and won’t be until he files it.
He promised his constituents months ago that he would do what he could legislatively to ban the open tray burn method of disposal of the millions of pounds of munitions stored at Camp Minden.
If passed, this means the legislature is telling the state of Louisiana and its military that it cannot dispose of munitions with the open tray burn. An alternative method of disposal will have to be chosen, he says.
Through a dialogue committee sponsored by the Environmental Protection Agency, the community fought for and won an alternate disposal method to eradicate nearly 16 million pounds of M6 propellant and clean burning igniter abandoned by Explo Systems Inc.
An explosion rocked the community of Doyline and surrounding areas in October 2012, when one of the bunkers at Camp Minden exploded. It shattered windows as far away as downtown Minden and sent a roughly 7,000-foot plume of smoke into the air.
Now that the contained burn method has been chosen, the Camp Minden Citizens Advisory Group has been formed, also sponsored by the EPA, to keep the public informed about the process, progress and monitoring of the clean up from beginning to end.