WILMINGTON, Del. (AP) _ Delaware and New Jersey officials raced to complete a second round of objections to a plan for shipping chemical weapon disposal waste to a DuPont plant on the Delaware River.

The move on Friday came after an Army manager said an opposition statement sent by both governors last week failed to qualify as a formal public comment.

"To me, that's hairsplitting. I want to tell you that the intent of those of us who participated in drafting that letter was to drive a stake in the heart of a vampire," said John A. Hughes, secretary of Delaware's Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control.

Col. Jesse L. Barber, who is managing the Army's disposal project, said he was unable to count the recent letter from Gov. Ruth Ann Minner and Gov. James E. McGreevey among comments due to the agency by Monday because the state's chief executives addressed their concerns to the secretary of the Army rather than the project record in Indiana.

He said that the concerns of Minner and McGreevey will be addressed. However, he said his agency believes DuPont already has the clearances needed to treat the waste.

Defense officials now are mainly assessing impacts and accepting comments on the plan to transport the wastewater from an Army depot in Indiana, he said.

"If anyone thinks the governors' letter to the secretary would be considered a submission against the FONSI (transportation plan) that's a bit of a stretch," Barber said.

FONSI is the Army's proposed finding of no significant impact.

"What I see in this is that the Army's playing games and trying to find technicalities and loopholes to avoid making the decision that clearly needs to be made," said Maya K. van Rossum, director of the Delaware Riverkeeper Network, a multistate environmental organization.

Van Rossum, who is an attorney, said her organization planned to demand a full environmental impact study on the river despite the Army's claim that it was unnecessary.

New Jersey's top environmental officer said earlier this month that his state was weighing the need for the same study.

The Army wants to begin neutralizing a 1,269-ton stockpile of VX nerve agent this summer, potentially shipping 4 million gallons of caustic waste to Deepwater over two to four years.

An international treaty obliges the United States to destroy its chemical weapon stores.