DuPont, lawmakers press for more data on process
By LAWRENCE HAJNA
Courier-Post Staff
The Army's controversial plan to ship neutralized VX nerve agent from Indiana to South Jersey faces what may be its most significant problem yet - the discovery that the wastewater byproduct is flammable.
The announcement surprised DuPont, which says it won't treat flammable wastes. The company plans to treat the wastewater at a plant it owns in Salem County and discharge the wastewater to the Delaware River.
"Safety is first and foremost for us," Anthony Farina, a company spokesman, said Thursday. "This is new information that is different from what was originally proposed. The Army has pledged to address it. We'll see where they end up."
Before new tests revealed the flammability problem, the Army had consistently described the waste as a caustic substance similar to household drain cleaner.
The announcement prompted New Jersey lawmakers to demand further explanation from the Army about the VX destruction process.
U.S. Rep. Rob Andrews, D-Haddon Heights, and Sen. Jon Corzine, D-Hoboken, on Thursday drafted a letter to Secretary of the Army Francis J. Harvey seeking additional details of the discovery made last week during testing at the Newport Chemical Agent Disposal Facility in west-central Indiana.
"How could they know so little about the chemical properties of this material? What else are they not aware of? Residue of VX comes to mind," Andrews said.
Army officials say they're trying to get to the bottom of the problem, adding it's too early to determine what impact this development will have on plans to transport hydrolysate to DuPont's Secure Environmental Treatment in Carneys Point."We aren't going to ship anything until we're satisfied it's safe," said Jeff Lindblad, spokesman for the Army's Chemical Materials Agency, which is responsible for destroying the nation's chemical weapon stockpile. "This is why we're doing a slow and deliberate startup - to catch things like this."
During its testing in Indiana, the Army learned that hydrolysate has a flash point between 68 and 88 degrees Fahrenheit. The flash point is the lowest temperature at which the vapors from a combustible liquid can ignite.
The Army had thought that the flash point for hydrolysate was above the 200-degree threshold required for classification of a material as flammable.
A flash point between 0 and 100 degrees is considered an indication of high to extreme flammability, according to the Web site for the University of Arizona's Department of Risk Management and Safety.
The Newport facility started destroying small quantities of VX on May 5. The Army had planned to suspend operations on June 13 to evaluate the process, Lindblad said. However, the plant was shut down June 10, after a spill of 30 gallons of VX and hydrolysate, and remains closed.
Reach Lawrence Hajna at (856) 486-2466 or lhajna@courierpostonline.com