INDIANAPOLIS -- An Army contractor that ran into early technical glitches destroying a deadly nerve agent stored in western Indiana has resolved those problems, allowing it to eradicate more than 10 percent of the Cold War-era stockpile.
But nearly a year after workers began destroying the Newport Chemical Depot's VX nerve agent, the question of where its chemical waste will end up remains unclear even as the project's cost has topped $1 billion.
A federal review of the Army's plan to ship the waste to a DuPont Co. plant in New Jersey for final treatment and disposal into the Delaware River continues even as opposition in New Jersey and Delaware shows no sign of waning.
Craig Williams of the Chemical Weapons Working Group in Berea, Ky., said the Army's goal of hiring DuPont to dispose of Newport's waste faces many daunting obstacles, not the least of which is the opposition of elected leaders in those states.
"The political dynamic of this thing, taken separately from the required regulatory processes that are under way, is something else entirely," Williams said. "They've got a lot of ground to cover before any of this gets moving on the highways."
The project is producing a caustic wastewater called hydrolysate that the Army compares chemically to liquid drain cleaner.
Although the disposal plan for that waste remains in doubt, the Army's contractor, Parsons Technology Inc., reports making steady progress destroying Newport's VX _ a single droplet of which can kill a human in minutes _ following some initial problems.
In May 2005, the 550 Parsons workers who staff a cavernous structure where two chemical reactors were built solely to eradicate Newport's VX stockpile, began destroying the cache.
As of Wednesday, they had destroyed 31,860 gallons of VX _ about 10.5 percent of the more than 250,000 gallons originally stored at Newport, said Jeff Brubaker, on-site manager for Army.
"We've had three months of very good operations, and we're currently ahead of the schedule we drew up about a year ago," he said. "That's very positive."
The project, which involves mixing the VX with heated water and sodium hydroxide inside the reactors, was plagued by problems during its first six months.
Operations were halted in June after a leak developed, spilling about 30 gallons of VX, sodium hydroxide and water. Work resumed in late August after diaphragm material in valves was replaced with ball-bearing systems, only to be halted again in late October when degraded gaskets caused a spill of about 490 gallons of hydrolysate.
Since operations resumed in early December following the replacement of dozens of degraded reactor gaskets, Brubaker said there have been no additional problems.
He said engineers hope to achieve their goal of destroying about 720 gallons of VX a day _ about twice the current amount _ during the next three to five months.
The total cost of the project now stands at $1.2 billion, including Pasadena, Calif.-based Parsons' $782 million contract. That contract was recently boosted by $196 million to extend its work from seven months to 30 months, Brubaker said.
That contract would run through the end of 2007, when the VX destruction is scheduled to be complete, leaving behind between 2 million and 4 million gallons of hydrolysate.
As of Wednesday, about 159,600 gallons of hydrolysate was stored in huge tanks at Newport, awaiting final treatment and disposal.
Last week, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency dropped its objections to DuPont's proposal to treat and dispose of the waste at its Deepwater, N.J., plant, but the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention continues to study the human health risks of that plan.
John Florence, a CDC spokesman, said the agency expects to release its report in April.
Army spokesman Jeff Lindblad said military officials were eagerly awaiting that report's conclusions.
"At that point, we'll determine where to go from there," he said.