Despite controversy, destruction of deadly nerve agent VX to proceed

NERVE AGENT DESTRUCTION: David Ardoin, an operator for Parsons Infrastructure and Technology Group Inc. demonstrates the enclosed CHATS system where the nerve agent VX is drained from the one-ton containers to begin the process of chemically neutralizing the stockpile at the Newport Chemical Depot in Newport, Ind. (AP/file photo)

By Rick Callahan/Associated Press/Newport

June 8, 2004

In a cavernous, pipe-filled structure known simply as the Utility Building, Army contractors in western Indiana are preparing to destroy a lethal Cold War-era concoction that's the human equivalent of bug spray.

This summer, after years of controversy, they will begin chemically neutralizing 1,269 tons of the ultra-deadly VX nerve agent stockpiled at the Newport Chemical Depot about 70 miles west of Indianapolis. Residents who have spent four decades near this weapon of mass destruction are ready to see it go. But a dispute over what will become of the project's wastewater could leave them stuck with the nerve agent's legacy.

Opposition from Dayton, Ohio, residents scuttled the Army's plan to dispose of up to 4 million gallons of that wastewater, or hydrolysate, at a plant there.

Now, plans to truck the waste to Deepwater, N.J., for treatment and disposal at a DuPont Corp. plant are in doubt amid opposition in New Jersey and adjoining Delaware from environmentalists, lawmakers and residents.

DuPont wants to dump treated hydrolysate into the Delaware River -- the waterway made famous by George Washington's Revolutionary War crossing.

But fears that the treated chemical could ruin decades of river cleanup led Delaware Gov. Ruth Ann Minner and New Jersey Gov. James McGreevey to send acting Army Secretary Les Brownlee a joint letter protesting the plan.

"Not enough is known about this to say for certain it wouldn't be a step back for the river," said Gregory Patterson, Minner's spokesman. "There's too many questions."

The Army maintains that heating the VX in a chemical reactor will destroy its chemical structure, producing compounds far safer than the nerve agent. Army officials liken the resulting hydrolysate to liquid drain cleaner, with the VX diluted to an undetectable level of 20 parts per billion or less.

"The nerve agent is destroyed very quickly in the reactor -- we're talking in the order of seconds," said Jeff Brubaker, the Army's site project manager for the neutralization project.

Newport has a long history of assisting military weapons systems.

During the 1940s, the site made "heavy water" used for the Manhattan Project, which produced the atomic bombs dropped on Japan in 1945.

The U.S. military produced the nation's VX stockpile solely at the 7,000-acre Newport complex between 1961 and 1968 as a doomsday deterrent. Although VX was never used by the American military in combat, there have been human exposures -- but no deaths -- in the United States. Its lethality was demonstrated in 1968, however, when an aerial spraying test of VX at Utah's Dugway Proving Grounds went awry, killing about 6,000 grazing sheep.

"One drop the size of George Washington's eye on a quarter is enough to kill a healthy, 180-pound male. It's the most lethal chemical on the planet," said Craig Williams, director of the Chemical Weapons Working Group in Berea, Ky.

In 1969, President Nixon halted the manufacture of chemical weapons. About 31,000 tons of VX, sarin and mustard nerve agent have been stored since then at Newport and seven other chemical depots in the United States.

As a signer of the international Chemical Weapons Convention treaty, the United States must destroy the chemical weapons at those depots, which are in Alabama, Arkansas, Colorado, Indiana, Kentucky, Maryland, Oregon and Utah. Forty-five percent of that arsenal must be eliminated by Dec. 31, 2007, said Jeff Lindblad, a spokesman for the Army's Chemical Materials Agency.

Destruction is under way at four of the eight depots. To date, Lindblad said, about 28 percent of the chemical weapons have been destroyed.

At the Newport depot, which held about 4 percent of the nation's original chemical weapons arsenal, Army contractors will open the first of 1,690 VX-filled steel containers late this summer. They will drain those containers inside airtight laboratory-style chambers, then transfer the VX to the chemical reactor for destruction.

The task of neutralizing the VX should take about 2 1/2 years.

John M. Kearney, the director of the Delaware chapter of the Clean Air Council, said the group opposes DuPont's plans to treat the hydrolysate because it contains "militarily unique" compounds it fears could pose a public health threat if dumped in the Delaware River. There's also the risk of a spill if the hydrolysate is trucked from Indiana to New Jersey, he said.

"There's concerns and uncertainty about this all along the way," Kearney said.

DuPont spokesman Anthony Farina said the company will not accept an Army contract to handle the hydrolysate until the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Environmental Protection Agency complete studies of DuPont's plans.

Mindful of the uncertainties, the Army intends to buy 50 5,000-gallon tanks that will allow it to store at Newport about 240,000 gallons of hydrolysate -- the amount expected to be produced in the first six months. It also might build a 400,000-gallon, refinery-style tank, Lindblad said.

Sara Morgan, a teacher from nearby Montezuma who led a campaign that forced the Army to drop its original plans to incinerate Newport's VX, is glad the neutralization will soon begin.

Yet she believes the project's waste should stay at Newport -- not sent off to become New Jersey and Delaware's problem.

"The citizens of the area where this is going to be treated should be accepting of it," she said. "I don't think it should be shoved down their throats."