NEWPORT, Ind. -- The Army will send samples of VX to laboratories in Illinois and Maryland to test the process it intends to use to destroy the deadly nerve agent, officials said.

The tests will determine whether the wastewater resulting from the nerve agent's destruction is safe to transport from the Newport Chemical Depot to a final disposal site along the Delaware River in New Jersey, military officials said.

"Testing these samples is critical to ensuring that we are prepared to safely destroy the VX at Newport," depot commander Lt. Col. Joseph Marquart said in a news release Tuesday.

Technicians will extract samples of VX from its carbon steel containers, the news release said. The samples will be packaged and escorted to Army laboratories in Edgewood, Md., and contractor laboratories in Illinois, Marquart said.

The Army will ensure safe transport of the samples, the news release said.

The VX will be neutralized at the labs and the byproduct will be tested, the Army said. The hydrolysate would not be allowed to leave Indiana unless the concentration of VX is no more than 20 parts per billion.

The military safely shipped VX in 1995 when some containers were checked to ensure the nerve agent was pure, said Army spokeswoman Terry Arthur.

A single drop of liquid VX can cause paralysis and death within minutes. About 1,269 tons of the Cold War-era nerve agent are stored at the depot north of Terre Haute. The VX was scheduled to be destroyed by April 2007 under the Chemical Weapons Convention international treaty.

The Army plans to begin neutralizing the VX at Newport this summer by mixing it with hot water and sodium hydroxide. The resulting chemical would be hydrolysate, which scientists compare to liquid drain cleaner.

Under the Army proposal, the hydrolysate would be shipped to DuPont's Secure Environmental Treatment facility in Deepwater, N.J., located at the foot of the Delaware Memorial Bridge. DuPont would break down the chemicals in the wastewater and dump effluent containing some chemical byproducts into the Delaware River.

The Army estimates the entire process would take about two years.

More than 500 citizens attended informational sessions conducted last week by the Army in New Jersey and Delaware and expressed opposition to the plan, fearing the chemical would pollute the river or might even reform into VX.

The Army dropped a previous plan to ship the hydrolysate to Dayton, Ohio, after similar opposition developed there.

"Ohio took a stand and won, and our citizens don't want the Delaware River further polluted," said John Kearney, spokesman for the Delaware Clean Air Council. "We don't want VX waste transported across the country to our community."