Defense Environment Alert

an exclusive biweekly report on defense policies for cleanup, compliance and pollution prevention

Vol. 15, No. 16

August 7, 2007

NAS CALL FOR OFF-SITE VX WASTE DISPOSAL BOLSTERS ARMY'S POSITION

A recently released report by an expert scientific panel bolsters the Army's position that neutralized VX nerve agent from the Army's Newport, Indiana site should be sent off-site for commercial disposal, coming as the Army plans to resume shipments soon from the Newport site to an incinerator in Texas following a favorable court ruling.

Experts from the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) are calling for "secondary" chemical weapons waste, including wastewater from neutralized VX nerve agent, to be sent off-site from military facilities for disposal, in a report issued July 26. The finding comes as a legal challenge to the shipment of VX waste material, or hydrolysate, from the Army's Newport depot has stalled. Both the NAS report and the court ruling are angering activists opposed to the Army's disposal practices. The ruling is available on InsideEPA.com. See page 2 for details.

But an Army spokesman denies citizen activist accusations that the Army or DOD may use the NAS report for political purposes to justify off-site destruction of secondary waste. The spokesman notes that the NAS report should have no bearing on the litigation over VX hydrolysate shipments from Newport.

Environmentalists and citizen activists late last week suffered a setback on the issue when the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Indiana denied their motion for a preliminary injunction against the shipping of VX hydrolysate from Newport to Texas. The groups, however, are vowing to seek a reversal of the opinion.

The groups in The Sierra Club, et al. v. Robert M. Gates, Secretary of Defense, et al. allege that the shipment of VX hydrolysate to Port Arthur, TX, contravenes the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA), the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), Indiana waste laws and federal law banning the interstate transport of chemical agents (Defense Environment Alert, July 24, p12).

But Chief Judge Larry J. McKinney's Aug. 3 decision clears the Army to resume shipments for incineration at the Texas site, operated by Veolia Environmental Services. After voluntarily suspending the shipments pending a court decision, the Army now plans to restart them, the Army says in a statement.

An activist with the Chemical Weapons Working Group (CWWG) - a litigant in the case - says that "we are not walking away from this," and says the plaintiffs plan to file a motion for reconsideration with the district court shortly. Should the motion be denied, the source says the next step would be an appeal to the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals, coupled with a motion seeking a temporary restraining order on VX hydrolysate shipments pending the outcome of the appeal.

On the secondary waste issue, the NAS panel pointed to time savings that could accrue with the use of off-site commercial disposal facilities.

Current Army policy is to wait until the end of all incineration campaigns at a site before disposing of most secondary waste generated by the elimination of chemical stockpiles, prior to the closure of each destruction site. The Army's move to send VX hydrolysate to Texas is the most notable exception to this. "Destroying the secondary waste concurrently at off-site locations whenever appropriate will dramatically improve closure operations," says Peter Lederman, chair of the NAS committee investigating the issue.

"The Army's incinerators are destroying the United States' stockpiled chemical weapons, but the on-site capacity is just not enough for treating high volumes of secondary wastes such as carbon, wood dunnage or protective gear," Lederman says

Lederman told reporters July 26 the NAS recommendations could save the Army a year to eighteen months in cleanup time if followed. In a presentation on the report's findings, Lederman said "off-site treatment of Newport hydrolysate is preferred." But the panel's inclusion of VX under the definition of secondary waste has angered activists, who worry that the material may be dangerous. The CWWG activist alleges that the NAS report exhibits a tendency for the panel, which is supposed to be independent, to rubber stamp Army policy.

The activist says the report "unfortunately follows a pattern of endorsing whatever the Army chooses. All [the NAS panel] appear[s] to consider is the schedule and the potential compliance with the regulatory regime."

The NAS panel also makes a separate recommendation regarding Army incinerators used in several casesto destroy primary chemical agent waste, recommending the loosening of requirements related to trial burns used toverify incinerators will work properly when burning a new type of agent.

NAS recommends that the Army cease conducting trial burns at incinerators slated to dispose of new types of chemical agent, arguing that data from equivalent incinerators elsewhere can be used to meet permit requirements under RCRA. Citizen activists also oppose the burning of chemical agent, and charge that the NAS position is a sop to the Army.

The CWWG activist also views the recommendation that trial burns can be bypassed without violating the terms of RCRA with suspicion, after CWWG launched numerous unsuccessful attempts to force the Army to abandon incineration with litigation over the past several years. "It is preposterous when you consider that the trial burns themselves are inadequate," the source says.

CWWG generally views neutralization as a preferable alternative to incineration, and has challenged the Army's trial burn data. CWWG claims the Army has glossed over trial burns that failed to meet regulatory stan- dards, and has been allowed by state regulators to simply continue conducting burns until they pass the test. The group therefore rejects the notion of abandoning trial burns altogether.

But Lederman in his presentation fully endorsed the use of existing trial burn data to supplant additional tests. He said that the Army's Chemical Materials Agency (CMA) "should vigorously pursue the application of the provision in the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act for using trial burn data from other similar chemical agent disposal facility incinerators in lieu of conducting trial burns for additional agents."

The Army spokesman acknowledges that it would be more cost-effective to conduct fewer trial burns, and disputes that this would be unsafe. "If it works at one site, it should be logical enough for it to work at another," says the source.

On the secondary waste issue, the Army spokesman confirms that CMA has only made limited use of off-site disposal of secondary waste to date. It would ultimately be less expensive to dispose of such waste at off-site, commercial incinerators that already have operating permits, the spokesman says. "It makes complete sense to destroy what [secondary waste] you can as you go," says the spokesman, who adds that otherwise the Army risks facing an "overwhelming backlog" of material to be disposed of.

Accusations of NAS bias toward the Army are also unjustified, says the spokesman, who argues that NAS has previously published reports that were highly critical of the Army, as well as supportive ones.