Stay or go, Army store of lethal VX frays nerves


By Tim Jones
Tribune national correspondent
Published August 27, 2005

NEWPORT, Ind. -- Like the house guest who never leaves, VX nerve agent, one of the last and deadliest vestiges of the Cold War, sits in thick steel storage tubes amid western Indiana's vast green fields of corn and soybeans.

Maybe the more than 1,200 tons of dangerous chemical weapons material will be moved out of this pastoral setting, as the Army has been trying to do for years. And maybe it won't.

According to analyst George Delgado, who testified this week before the federal Base Closure and Realignment Commission, it could be as late as 2012 before all the VX is destroyed or neutralized.

The long-running drama over what to do with the viscous chemical last produced in 1968 faces not only scientific and environmental obstacles but political resistance in New Jersey, where officials have vowed to block any plans to truck a watery, neutralized form of the nerve agent to their state for disposal in the Delaware River.

Even if officials here figure out how to safely neutralize the chemical, there are no guarantees the material will leave Indiana.

"I'm probably not going to see that stuff moved out of here, not in my lifetime," predicted Tim Wilson, the 48-year-old president of the Vermillion County Board of Commissioners who has monitored the Army's efforts to destroy the nerve agent.

"I think they're going to have a hard time transporting it out," Wilson said.

Practically nothing about the planned disposal of the VX nerve agent, stored about 30 miles north of Terre Haute near the village of Newport, has been easy. The chemical stockpiled at the 8,000-acre Newport Chemical Agent Disposal Facility was supposed to be gone years ago, as dictated by a 1990 disarmament agreement between the United States and the Soviet Union. But since then there have been huge fights over how to safely dispose of the cooking oil-type material. Incineration was proposed and later dropped because of environmental concerns.

Disposal plan

VX, which the Army began producing in 1961, was designed for launch on rockets or to drop on large numbers of troops. It works like a pesticide; as little as a pinhead inhaled or touching skin can kill a person in minutes. The chemical weapon never was used, and the nation's entire VX stockpile is housed at the Indiana depot. The goal was to have all of the material disposed of by the end of 2007, but delays have made the earliest possible date late 2008.

Neutralizing the material--or watering it down to what scientists say is a caustic but not toxic solution--is the current plan, but that, too, has run into problems. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in a recent report that diluting the agent may not be harmful to humans but might damage aquatic organisms. The Army suspended disposal operations in mid-June after officials at the facility discovered a wastewater leak during the neutralization process. Inspectors also learned that the wastewater--the byproduct of neutralizing the material--was more flammable than expected.

The Army announced this month that it hopes to resume neutralizing the chemical stockpile before the end of the month.

"The destruction of chemical weapons is always a challenge," said Lt. Col. Scott Kimmell, the commander at the chemical depot. "It is somewhat predictable in that it's not predictable."

In Newport, a community of about 560 people 3 miles north of the depot, people have learned to live with their volatile neighbor and are weathering the uncertainty over disposal plans. There was a spike in anxiety immediately after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, when officials feared the chemical depot was a potential terrorist target. On-site security was beefed up, and the Federal Aviation Administration placed flight restrictions over the area. Kimmell calls the area around the chemical depot, including Newport, "the safest place in Indiana."

Large, honeycomb-shaped sirens installed atop utility poles to warn residents of a chemical leak blare every Wednesday, as a test of the security system. For many, that weekly event is the only time they give a thought to the presence of the nerve agent.

Out of sight, out of mind

"You know, if the TV media would just leave it alone, everybody'd forget about the damn thing," said David Bedwell, who runs a computer and Internet service provider shop on the town square. Bedwell would rather talk about Newport's antique car race, an annual, three-day event that draws more than 100,000 people to the tiny town.

"You got all these people coming here, and they don't show up with gas masks on," Bedwell said.

Because the Newport depot is the largest employer in Vermillion County, people are conflicted about the operation. If and when the nerve agent is gone, the jobs will be gone as well.

"I have mixed feelings," said Wilson, the county commissioner. "It's always been there and it's been good for employment, but you don't know what will be developed there if it's gone."

At Gidget's Market, owner Gidget Hall is philosophical about the presence and potential danger of VX.

"If it's my time, it's my time," Hall said as she prepared pizzas behind the market's meat counter. "I really don't even think about it, and I don't hear people talking about it much."

The further one travels from Newport, the greater the worry. About 15 miles to the south, in rural Fairview Park, Leonard Akers has been following the VX debate for years.

"You talk about homeland security, but to send 4 million gallons of VX [wastewater] across the country is absurd. It's absolutely crazy. It's a terrorist target," said Akers, who is part of the environmental activist organization Indiana Chemical Weapons Working Group.

"It [VX] should be neutralized on site . . . and then be safely land-filled. It should not leave Indiana in the state that it's in," Akers said. "I don't think this is ever going to leave Indiana."

The loudest objections come from New Jersey and Delaware. New Jersey's acting governor, Richard Codey, has notified the secretary of the Army of his concerns about plans to release the treated wastewater into the Delaware River, "a river that is not only a precious natural resource, but also an important part of our states' economies," Codey said.

Sen. Jon Corzine, the Democratic nominee for New Jersey governor, called the plan to dispose of the wastewater into the Delaware "just inconceivable." Corzine vowed that, if elected, he would use his authority to block all environmental permits allowing for the release of the neutralized agent. Corzine said a good alternative is to keep the material stored in Newport.

Jeff Brubaker, the site project manager for the Newport chemical depot, said the site has enough storage capacity to hold only about 15 percent of the neutralized nerve agent. He said he is confident that scientific roadblocks and the CDC's concerns will be resolved soon.

What about the politics of trucking it out of Indiana?

"The politics are an unknown," Brubaker said.

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tmjones@tribune.com