Lawsuit tries to stop nerve agent waste shipments
The Sierra Club - along with Port Arthur's Community In-Power Development Association, residents and environmental groups in Kentucky and Indiana - filed the lawsuit in federal court in Terre Haute, Ind.
The plaintiffs oppose a $49 million federal contract with Veolia to destroy about 1.9 million gallons of wastewater at the company's Port Arthur facility.
Company and military officials maintain the material and process aren't dangerous, but residents and environmental groups disagree.
The plaintiffs detail 10 allegations in their filing, among them that the shipments violate state and federal environmental and chemical hazard laws and do not follow hazardous shipment regulations.
They also allege the military has not thoroughly studied the wastewater or the danger an accident, spill or terrorist attack could pose to people along the 1,000-mile shipping route from Indiana to Texas.
The group is asking the federal judge to stop the shipments long enough to allow additional study, according to documents.
Citing "new information," the group also alleges that used containers Veolia has sent back to the U.S. Army's chemical weapons facility in Indiana still have "50 gallons of liquid that is presumably (wastewater)."
Craig Williams, director of the Kentucky-based Chemical Weapons Working Group, said in a telephone interview Tuesday the information came from a reliable source who has consistently provided other information that has checked out.
Veolia environmental and health safety manager Daniel Duncan denied the assertion.
The tankers are unloaded as much as possible and rinsed with hundreds of gallons of water, then emptied as much as possible before they are sent back, Duncan said.
Anything remaining would be even less dangerous because it has been remixed and diluted, he said.
"It is an extremely more dilute solution of the same material," Duncan said.
The plaintiffs also claim the trucks have been traveling without proper hazardous material placards and manifests that state "applicable hazardous waste codes." That is a violation of state and federal laws, the lawsuit states.
Duncan said hazardous materials placards are required by the U.S. Department of Transportation.
All trucks that have entered and left the Veolia facility have had the proper markings during their entire 1,000-mile trips, Duncan said.
"If there was an issue with Department of Transportation regulations, we would have known about it long before because they'd never make it though the inspections."
U.S. Army Chemical Materials Agency spokesman Mickey Morales previously has told The Enterprise that the U.S. Army doesn't comment on pending litigation as a matter of policy.
Hilton Kelley, director of Community In-Power Development Association, said his side has done all the negotiating it can do. Kelley said he doesn't fault Veolia, but he thinks the U.S. Army didn't tell the company all it needed to know about the wastewater.
"I think we're going to end up going all the way with this," Kelley said. "We're giving it our best shot simply because we have no other course of action."
As of Tuesday, Veolia has received a total of 41 shipments and has incinerated 18 of them, Duncan said.
If a judge grants an injunction, Duncan said it might slow the shipping process in Indiana.
"We don't think it would have any true impact," Duncan said. "It might temporarily delay the project, but we're confident that it will prove what's been already stated, that there is no reconstituted VX in those containers."
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