Cox News Service 10/14/03

Cox News Service
Ocrtober 14, 2003

Army cancels VX contract

DAYTON, Ohio -- The U.S. Army and Parsons Corp. are terminating their contract with Perma-Fix of Dayton to treat neutralized VX nerve agent.

U.S. Rep. Mike Turner, R-Ohio, confirmed Monday that Army officials were withdrawing from a plan that called for the company to receive up to 900,000 gallons of VX waste products for treatment and discharge into the Montgomery County sewer system. The Army is expected to announce the withdrawal today.

Turner said he still plans to go ahead with a congressional field hearing on the Perma-Fix contract, set for Oct. 22 at Sinclair Community College, "to give the Dayton community the opportunity to enter into the public record the issues they have faced throughout this process."

Louis F. Centofanti, Perma-Fix chairman and CEO, said, "This stop work order ends our efforts to treat these materials in Dayton."

The company, in a release sent to the Dayton Daily News at 7:12 p.m., announced that Parsons, the systems contractor for the Army's chemical weapons depot in Newport, Ind., has directed Perma-Fix to stop work on the subcontract related to the treatment of hydrolysate, which is produced during the neutralization process.

Army and Parsons officials did not return phone calls Monday, a federal holiday.

Perma-Fix would have been paid $9 million for accepting the first 330,000 gallons of VX waste products from the depot in Indiana. The company completed a demonstration study this summer that Army and Perma-Fix officials said showed the wastes could be handled safely here.

"This is an excellent accomplishment for our community," Turner said Monday in a phone conversation from the Middle East, where he is part of a five-member congressional delegation touring the area. "Our county commissioners should be congratulated for their diligence, and the local community for their hard work."

Turner, who has been battling the Army plan since early March, said he will continue to monitor the situation closely "to secure guarantees that this issue will not return."

Members of the Citizens for the Responsible Destruction of Chemical Weapons of the Miami Valley, a grassroots opposition group that formed soon after the Army announced its plans here early this year, greeted the news with elation.

"It just goes to show you what a community of different people can do when it comes together," member Mary Johnson said. "That's what it should be about -- collaboration."

The Army's decision to pull out of the Dayton portion of its plan is one more detour in a long and troubled history for the nation's chemical weapons disposal program, which has been "plagued by frequent schedule delays, cost overruns and continuing management problems" since its inception 17 years ago, according to a report released in September by the General Accounting Office, the watchdog of Congress.

It's not clear what will happen to the VX waste products that were to be shipped to Montgomery County, but the Army already is building temporary storage facilities at its Newport Chemical Disposal Facility in Indiana.

In 1986, Congress directed the Pentagon to destroy the nation's chemical weapons stockpiles in a safe manner -- a move given new impetus in 1997 when the United States joined 150 other countries in the Chemical Weapons Convention, an agreement banning the use of chemical weapons and mandating a deadline of April 2007 for destroying all stockpiles.

The Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks heightened fears that the deadly agents would be used against Americans through theft or sabotage. Soon after, the Defense Department and the Army reorganized the program's complex management structure and, for the third time since 1994, revised the timetable for destroying the stockpiles. The program's cost estimate also was increased -- from $15 billion to $24 billion.

The GAO report faults the Pentagon and the Army for failing to anticipate "plant safety issues, difficulties in obtaining environmental permits, public concerns about emergency preparedness and budgeting shortfalls."

Seven of the nine stockpile sites around the country will miss the 2007 weapons convention deadline by several years. The pull-out from Dayton raises the question whether the Newport depot, which had been on target to destroy its stockpile by September 2006, will now be the eighth site.

Opposition to the Dayton portion of the plan grew all through the spring and summer, with 33 government entities and community organizations in Montgomery County, including the Montgomery County Commission, voting against the plan.

In July, citizen opponents, represented by Legal Aid attorney Ellis Jacobs, filed a federal lawsuit against the Army, claiming it failed to perform a required environmental impact study.

That same month, the Army announced it would begin constructing temporary storage facilities at Newport for holding all 900,000 gallons of neutralized VX.

Then last Tuesday, based on safety questions raised by a Northwestern University consultant, county Sanitary Engineer Jim Brueggeman said his department would not issue a permit for Perma-Fix to discharge its end products into the county's sewer treatment plant.

The next day, Turner announced that the Subcommittee on National Security, Emerging Threats and International Relations would convene an oversight hearing in Dayton on the plan. Army and Perma-Fix officials will be queried under oath at the Oct. 22 hearing.