Colonel in charge of inactivated nerve agent disposal says city should have been told
"I do not plan to ship all my waste to Texas," Barber assured council members, adding the wastewater already is being destroyed.
Barber, who visited the Veolia site at 6:30 a.m. Tuesday, said it was his idea to contract with Veolia because it was permitted to receive that type of wastewater. Permitting problems in Ohio and New Jersey eliminated those sites as options to destroy the 1.6 million gallons of wastewater.
Not knowing truckloads of the caustic wastewater were coming to the city was one of the City Council members' main concerns and the basis for a community uproar.
Barber said Veolia was a prime choice because it could start destroying the deactivated agent 11 days after the contract was signed.
"There is no detectable agent in the wastewater," Veolia General Manager Mitch Osborne told the council.
The trucks are tracked via satellite to Veolia and an emergency response team is on call in case there is a problem, Osborne said.
The incineration process heats the wastewater in a kiln to 1450 degrees to 1500 degrees Fahrenheit and then moves it to another combustion chamber where it is heated to 2020 degrees to 2060 degrees Fahrenheit, Osborne said.
Veolia has three permits, for air, hazardous materials and for the deep well, said Derek Eades, waste programs and emergency response regional manager for the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.
Each permit has a specific time frame - the air permit, for example, was issued in 2004 and is good for 10 years - and each is issued after a 30-day public comment period, Eades said. The hazardous waste permit was reissued in 2006 and the company has had the appropriate permits to handle this type of waste since 1990, he added.
The Veolia facility receives about 100 different shipments a week, Osborne said. "If we really knew the material that came in, we would see that this is probably very mild," Councilman Tom Henderson said.
Mayor Oscar Ortiz said all anyone would have to do to understand the situation is look up "caustic" and "wastewater" in the dictionary.
Councilman Bob Williamson said it's not any more caustic than lye water, used to clean drains and make soap and catfish bait.
Barber said the he hopes to have all of the deactivated weapons stockpiles destroyed in two years, when he plans to retire to Texas.
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