Posted on Thu, Aug. 03, 2006

Newport VX site safely dismantled

Inspectors OK razed nerve gas plant

Associated Press

NEWPORT ’Äì A multinational group that verifies chemical weapon sites are destroyed in compliance with an international treaty has finished its work at a razed plant where the U.S. Army produced its entire supply of deadly VX nerve agent.

Between 1961 and 1968, the plant at the Newport Chemical Depot produced more than 4,400 tons of VX nerve agent ’Äì a single droplet of which can kill a human.

The 1997 Chemical Weapons Convention treaty requires that signing nations destroy their chemical weapons stockpiles and related equipment by 2012 ’Äì a process that's being overseen by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, a group based in The Hague, Netherlands.

Now that those international inspectors have completed their work at the site of the old VX production plant, the project has been finished nearly a year ahead of schedule, said Doug Stroud, the depot’Äôs treaty compliance officer.

He said the international inspectors made 14 trips to Newport to examine the site of the razed production plant, about 30 miles north of Terre Haute.

"Today the inspection team confirmed that the United States is leading the way in safely dismantling facilities that were once used to produce chemical weapons," he said.

The sprawling plant has taken contractors years to dismantle, including the demolition of large scrubber towers that filtered VX from plant emissions during the 1960s. That work produced more than five million pounds of scrap metal.

And work continues to decontaminate a pipe removed from the site.

During the 1960s, the Army filled munitions with VX at Newport before shipping them by rail to U.S. defense sites worldwide.

Last year, an Army contractor began neutralizing the more than 250,000 gallons of VX originally stored at the site. About 20 percent of that stockpile has now been destroyed.