By LAWRENCE HAJNA
Courier-Post Staff
CARNEYS POINT

The U.S. Army is considering shipping the byproduct of a neutralized Cold War-era nerve agent to a DuPont waste treatment plant here in Salem County for discharge into the Delaware River.

The liquid VX nerve agent, one of the deadliest substances ever made, will first be rendered nonlethal at the Newport Chemical Depot in west central Indiana, where it's been stockpiled for decades.

In Newport, the agent will be neutralized with hot water and sodium hydroxide to form hydrolysate, a caustic compound scientists liken to household drain cleaner.

If brought to South Jersey, Dupont would remove any remaining chemicals and discharge the effluent into the river.

DuPont officials stress that it will handle no actual nerve agent and that the effluent discharged into the river would be virtually pure water.

A single drop of VX can cause paralysis and death within minutes. But no materials will be shipped if VX is found at or above 20 parts per billion - the threshold for detectability using current testing methods, said Terry Arthur, spokeswoman for the Newport depot.

"What we want to make perfectly clear is that we are not shipping nerve agent for treatment anywhere," Arthur said Monday.

DuPont has submitted a proposal to treat 2 to 4 million gallons of hydrolysate. The process would likely take more than a year. The earliest a contract could be awarded is Jan. 21.

Shipments would not start until late summer or early fall, after extensive testing of the neutralization process, Arthur said.

Shipments would likely occur in tanker trucks or using a combination of tanker trucks and trains, she said.

The military has accelerated chemical weapons destruction plans to reduce risks from terrorist attacks as a result of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. The Newport depot was the only place VX was ever made and has been storing 1,200 tons of the nerve agent since 1969, when President Nixon issued a moratorium on production of chemical weapons.

Final treatment would be handled by Secure Environmental Treatment, the arm of DuPont that handles wastewater treatment for the company as well as wastes from other companies. It is the nation's largest commercial hazardous wastewater treatment plant.

Secure Environmental Treatment is treating the hydrolysate byproduct of neutralized mustard agent from the Army's Aberdeen Chemical Agent Disposal Facility in Maryland.

DuPont would not disclose the amount it is seeking to handle the materials. Military procurement rules prohibit disclosure of the contract amount until it is actually awarded, Arthur said.

The public should have no concerns about the plan, said John Strait, plant manager for the Chambers Works site.

The company uses microscopic bugs to "chew up and get rid of the chemicals in any wastes we get," he said. "If we found any issues, our policy is that we wouldn't take it."

The Army and its contractor at Newport, Parsons Technologies, gave up on a plan to send the hydrolysate to sewer mains in Dayton, Ohio, because of public backlash.

Perma-Fix, a potential subcontractor, was to be paid $9 million to treat 330,000 gallons of the material and discharge it to sewers.

But activists sued to block the plan, and local officials threatened to take away a permit the company needed to stay in business.

Maya van Rossum of the Delaware Riverkeeper Network, an environmental group that works to protect the river, was shocked to learn of the DuPont plan.

"This sounds like a very dangerous process with the possibility of harm to the river, to aquatic life in the river and to the people who depend on the river," she said.

Van Rossum criticized the Army for not being more up front with the plan and demanded public hearings be scheduled.

At DuPont's request, the Army placed a legal notice in Salem County's local paper, Today's Sunbeam, last month, Arthur said. The notice is not actually required until the contract is awarded, she added.

"In this case, DuPont, which is a contender, decided to let the public know what's going on," Arthur said.

The legal notice refers to the transportation of liquid effluent from the treatment of chemical agents at the Newport depot but makes no mention of the nerve agent.