Daily costs of Indiana VX disposal facility grows to $300,000
September 23, 2004, 2:41 PM EDT
The Associated Press
Delaware River.
NEWPORT, Ind. (AP) _ The cost of operating a western Indiana complex built
to destroy a Cold War-era nerve agent has grown to about $300,000 a day,
even as delays have set back the project's start, Army officials said.
The latest daily
cost estimate for operating the Newport Chemical Agent Disposal Facility
is about $50,000 more a day than the figure the Army reported last year.
Jeff Brubaker, the Army's project site manager, said the new, $300,000-a-day
figure comes from daily costs incurred June 4 through Aug. 4 at the complex
about 30 miles north of Terre Haute.
The military had planned to begin chemically neutralizing about 1,269 tons
of deadly VX nerve agent stockpiled at the depot this summer, but the project
has been pushed back until _ at the earliest _ late this year.
The Army wants to ship about 4 million gallons of the VX byproduct _ a chemical
called hydrolysate that has been compared to liquid drain cleaner _ to a
DuPont Inc. plant in Deepwater, N.J. Under those plans, DuPont would dump
the treated hydrolysate into the Delaware River.
Residents along the river and environmentalists have opposed the plan.
The new daily cost estimate includes the cost of operating the complex, laboratory
and program management, administrative and project support staff, along with
government monitoring and oversight personnel who witnessed a test-run of
the plant this summer.
"The period of time starting in June 2004 was the beginning of demonstrating
readiness to begin operations," he said.
In addition to the $300,000 daily cost of operating the disposal facility,
the rate of running the depot's stockpile storage/base operations side runs
to just more than $60,000 a day, Brubaker said.
Over the past two years, there have been many delays in the Army's schedule
to destroy the nerve agent. Last month, Brubaker said he expected VX destruction
to begin late this year.
Craig Williams, director of the Chemical Weapons Working Group in Berea,
Ky., said delays have been common at the nation's weapon-destruction facilities.
His group works to ensure the safe destruction and disposal of the nation's
chemical weapon stockpiles.
Newport is one of eight chemical weapons storage sites across the nation
where the Army is working to destroy stockpiles by 2007 as part of an international
treaty.
"There is zero predictability within the Chemical Agent Disposal Program
because the cost continues to escalate," he said. "The program is $22 billion
over budget and at least 17 years behind schedule."
Marilyn Daughdrill, a Chemical Materials Agency spokeswoman, confirmed the
accuracy of Williams' numbers. She said the agency's original estimates for
the cost and time required to destroy the nation's weapons caches "were extraordinarily
optimistic."
She said costs have grown not only because each storage site is unique, but
the types and formulations of chemical weapons are different at each complex.
The Associated Press