NEWPORT, Ind. - Army contractors halted operations
Saturday at a western Indiana complex built to destroy a deadly nerve agent
after nearly 500 gallons of a caustic wastewater created by the chemical
weapon's destruction spilled in a contained area.
No workers were injured or exposed to the wastewater, called
hydrolysate, when it leaked onto the floor of a sealed area at the Newport
Chemical Depot, said Dennis Lindsey, a spokesman for the depot about 30 miles
north of Terre Haute.
After the spill of about 490 gallons of hydrolysate was discovered
about 6 a.m. Saturday, workers wearing sealed protective suits entered the
area to begin pumping the spilled hydrolysate into tank systems, Lindsey
said.
"Everything is shut down in the safe mode right now until
we get everything taken care. Once we found out what the problem is and get
it fixed we'll start back up again," he said.
Lindsey said it was unclear what had caused the leak, which
occurred in a recirculation loop that is linked to the chemical reactors
where the VX is destroyed using a mixture of heated sodium hydroxide and
water by workers for Army contractor Parsons Technology Inc.
That loop is used by workers and inspectors to take samples
and analyze the material inside the reactor to make sure that after each
batch of VX is chemically neutralized it contains no measurable amounts of
VX, a single droplet of which can kill a healthy human.
In May, Parsons workers began destroying more than 250,000
gallons of the Cold War-era chemical weapon. The project was halted in June
after a leak allowed about 30 gallons of VX, sodium hydroxide and water to
spill in a contained area.
It resumed in late August after valves that had caused the
June leak were replaced with an all-metal ball-bearing valve system.
Lindsey said that this time the ball-bearing system had performed
perfectly and that the leak occurred somewhere in the reactors' recirculation
loop.
Parsons workers have been working to ramp up operations at
the neutralization complex, which was built at the depot by the company.
Pending federal approval, the Army plans to ship millions
of gallons of hydrolysate to a DuPont Inc., plant in New Jersey for treatment
and eventual discharge into the Delaware River.
