DuPont plant routinely extracts chemicals, discharges safe water

By LAWRENCE R. HAJNA
Courier-Post Columnist

I ponder whether I should hold onto the railing as I walk across the steel catwalk.

Just a few feet below me, a toxic brew of chemical-laden wastewater, black and oily, froths furiously in a giant holding tank like the contents of a witch's cauldron.

A really big and really deep witch's cauldron.

I decide to appear nonchalant, so I casually trace my fingers along the railing before my guide, Todd Owens, stops over the bubbling brew.

This is the heart of DuPont's Secure Environmental Treatment facility, North America's largest industrial wastewater treatment plant.

Some of the nastiest chemical wastes from across the continent come to this facility in Carneys Point, Salem County, for treatment and discharge into the Delaware River. Yet few outsiders know it exists.

This is also where the Army proposes to send the waste byproduct from the neutralization of the deadly VX nerve agent, stockpiled in Indiana since the 1960s.

That's why I'm here, to get a firsthand look at how the facility works. DuPont wants to assure me that if it does take the material, known as hydrolysate, it can do so safely.

"We don't (accept) things we can't treat," said Owens, a chemical engineer who runs the facility.

The proposal has stirred a lot of public outcry; it didn't help that the public learned about it by accident.

DuPont, which won't release the anticipated contract amount, says it has worked with a community advisory panel on the proposal and published a legal notice in a Salem County newspaper.

The legal notice, however, didn't mention VX. And the public was certainly taken by surprise when the Courier-Post ran stories about the proposal.

Politicians in New Jersey and Delaware, including Gov. James E. McGreevey and Sen. Jon Corzine, swiftly demanded public meetings.

This week, the company released a report that says it can do the job safely. In concert with the report's release, the Army scheduled public informational meetings - March 17 at Carneys Point-Penns Grove High School and March 19 in Delaware.

The meetings - St. Patrick's Day night and a Friday night - may seem somewhat inconvenient, but DuPont says it's purely a matter of logistics. "What's important is that people have time to review these documents," DuPont spokesman Anthony Farina said.

The state Department of Environmental Protection is reviewing the report. DEP Commissioner Bradley M. Campbell on Friday said "an initial review suggests (its) conclusions are consistent with our understanding of the science and engineering involved."

DuPont is clearly trying to calm troubled waters as Owens and Farina walk me around the plant.

It's a labyrinth of elevated pipes amid big storage tanks and rectangular settling basins as long as football fields.

Automated snowplow-like rakes slowly, almost imperceptibly, push through the basins, wringing chemical solids from the water before it is sent for "biotreatment" in three above-ground tanks, including the one I stood over.

All that bubbling just below the catwalk is actually a good thing, Owens assures me. The bubbles are from carbon dioxide being released by the digestion of the chemicals.

Thousands of different forms of microbes have grown and evolved in these tanks over the years, possibly into heretofore unknown forms, to literally eat away whatever DuPont sends into the system.

These bugs love this toxic stew, Owens said. "It's a very unique technique. We invented it."

DuPont built the facility in the mid-1970s to treat wastewater from pigments and dye processes at its adjacent Chambers Works chemical-production plant.

But DuPont phased out the pigment and dye operation by the end of the decade, leaving the company with a large wastewater treatment plant on its hands.

So DuPont began contracting the plant to other companies that needed to get rid of wastewater; it also uses the plant for wastewater it generates at Chambers Works and its other North American plants.

The process, known as Powdered Activated Carbon Treatment, or PACT, uses biological degradation and carbon absorption technologies.

The mixture below me is ash-black as a result of the specially formulated carbon used to filter the chemicals. The paste-like sludge of carbon and toxins wrung from the wastewater is sent to a mountainous landfill next to the plant.

In the case of VX, the Army must first certify that none of the nerve agent - one of the deadliest substances ever made - can be detected in truck or train shipments leaving Indiana, Owens said.

"We will not accept it with any trace of VX," he said.

Inspectors from the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, formed by international treaty, will monitor the destruction and treatment process both in Indiana and at DuPont.

OPCW inspectors are already stationed at DuPont to monitor the treatment of the waste byproduct from the neutralization of Army mustard agent, a process that has been ongoing for nearly a year.

The Army accelerated plans to destroy VX and mustard agent after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

VX is an odorless, oily liquid that attacks the nervous system through the skin, eyes or lungs. A few drops cause death in minutes.

Ironically, it's the sodium hydroxide that is used to render these chemical agents nonlethal that is considered hazardous and needs treatment, Owens said.

The Army plans to use hot water and hot sodium hydroxide, a caustic chemical, to break down the VX into nonlethal salts and organic compounds in Indiana. The resulting hydrolysate has been likened to household drain cleaner and is about 85 percent water.

About two tanker trucks of hydrolysate will be sent to DuPont daily, for two to three years, where it will be mixed with millions of gallons of other industrial wastewater the plant regularly treats.

Once treated, it will be whisked away with other wastewater through a concrete canal toward the Delaware River. This water has a yellowish tint to it but it meets all standards set by the state for discharge, Owens said.

And it's infinitely better than the brew that came into the plant, he said.

"It's not having an impact on the river," he said. "That's the big thing to us."

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Reach Reach Lawrence Hajna at (856) 486-2466 or lhajna@courierpostonline.com