Veolia open house doesn't derail protest planning
Veolia Environmental Service, the Port Arthur-area company which has a contract with the U.S. Army to incinerate 1.8 million gallons of VX nerve gas waste water over the next three years, hosted an open house.
"We'd like the (public) to understand that we can manage this waste safely," Veolia General Manager Mitch Osborne said. "We manage similar materials, in term of corrosiveness, on a weekly basis. If we couldn't do this safely to protect our workers and the public, we wouldn't be doing this."
Meanwhile, David Day, a 24-year Port Arthur resident, is considering moving away.
"My wife and I were planning on retiring here," Day, a Lamar
University
laboratory technician, said. "We don't want to be here if Port Arthur
becomes the chemical dumping ground of the United States."
Day attended the tour of the facility and in the evening, a meeting hosted by Hilton Kelley, director of the Port Arthur-based Community In-Power Development Association.
Kelley and about 120 of his supporters are planning to protest at Veolia Wednesday.
"We've got to stop these trucks," Kelley said at the meeting at a Port Arthur Baptists church.
"If we don't stop these trucks we have no else to blame," he continued to the crowd's applause.
People who toured the disposal facility got an explanation of the waste disposal process as company officials pointed out the equipment used.
Visitor also saw the unloading area, a truck dock with a series of specially-designed hoses with fail-safe devices; and the incinerator, which is a rotating horizontal cylinder about 16 feet long and 16 feet in diameter.
The incinerator is controlled from a room rigged with several cameras that show what is going in and coming out of the incinerator.
The ash that comes out of the incinerator is collected and buried at a secured landfill in Louisiana, Osborne said.
In the case of the VX waste water, the substance is incinerated, then any combustible gas or acidic gases are cleansed with sodium hydroxide, Veolia Health and Safety Manager Daniel J. Duncan said.
The protest meeting included a PowerPoint presentation by John Sullivan from the Center of Environmental Toxicology at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston.
Sullivan said the problem with the VX waste water is not its toxicity - the amount of VX in the treated waste water is 20 to 48 parts per billion - but with the corrosive nature of the waste water.
The degree of corrosiveness of the waste water is such that there is no container that holds the liquid for very long, Sullivan said.
But the main fear among the protesters is the possibility of Port Arthur becoming a dumping ground for discarded chemical weapons and other waste, Sullivan said.
"First off, nothing is ever 'dumped' here," Duncan said. "Secondly, we will never receive chemical weapons. We are not permitted to receive nor is the government permitted to send weapon-grade materials. The government must destroy the weapon first, as with the VX nerve gas, which is turned into waste water."
Day thinks the problem in Port Arthur is more pervasive.
"Look at Port Arthur, all these chemical plants and refineries, but where is the money?" he asked. "Twenty years ago Port Arthur was a beautiful place. Now there is trash everywhere. Where is wealth from these factories?"
paulsmartinez@beaumontenterprise.com
(409) 880-0737