NEWPORT, Ind. - A new Army report concludes that it would take nearly five years longer to finish the destruction of a deadly nerve agent if a plan to ship the wastewater produced to New Jersey was dropped in favor of keeping it in Indiana.
The report released Tuesday said that disposing of the chemical waste at western Indiana's Newport Chemical Depot was estimated to cost at least $347 million more than having that work done at DuPont Co.'s Deepwater, N.J., plant.
The Army also certified to Congress that it continued to prefer using DuPont to treat the wastewater created by the destruction of the Cold War-era VX nerve agent, even as opponents continue to raise safety concerns.
Treating the waste at Newport would mean delaying completion of the work by as long as 57 months, the review found.
The report "demonstrates that our proposal for off-site treatment provides significant and substantial benefit to the taxpayer," said Col. Jesse L. Barber, a project manager for the Army's Chemical Materials Agency at the Aberdeen Proving Grounds in Maryland.
An Army contractor began last May destroying more than 250,000 gallons of VX - a liquid so deadly even a droplet can kill a human - in special chemical reactors at the complex about 30 miles north of Terre Haute.
That project is expected to produce about 4 million gallons of hydrolysate, a chemical the Army wants to truck hundreds of miles to DuPont's Deepwater plant, where it would be treated and discharged into the Delaware River.
That plan has generated strong opposition in both New Jersey and Delaware from critics who fear traces of VX and other toxic byproducts would reach the river even after treatment. Activists in Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Kentucky also oppose the disposal plans, warning of environmental damage if a truck carrying hydrolysate overturned.
Army officials maintain that the disposal plan is safe.
Tests reviewed by the Environmental Protection Agency at DuPont found that after the VX hydrolysate is treated, it can be disposed of in the Delaware River without harming its most sensitive species - flathead minnows, water fleas and green algae, said Jeff Lindblad, an Army Chemical Materials Agency spokesman.
Congress last year sought the cost-benefit comparison of treating the chemical waste at Newport and New Jersey.
The total cost of the project now stands at $1.2 billion, including Parsons Technology Inc.'s $782 million contract for the VX neutralization.
Barber said by treating the hydrolysate at DuPont's New Jersey plant, the VX destruction and hydrolysate disposal can be done at the same time and completed by the end of 2007.
The Army reported that as of Tuesday about 42,700 gallons of VX had been destroyed - about 17 percent of the more than 250,000 gallons originally stored at the Newport depot.