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


Vol. 13, No. 18--September 6, 2005


ACTIVISTS PUSH NEW PLAN FOR NEWPORT VX NERVE AGENT DISPOSAL

A coalition of citizen's organizations are pressing the Army to adopt a new plan for disposing of VX nerve agent stored at Newport, IN - a proposal they say will allow the service to avoid the cost escalations, lawsuits and political rancor that will inevitably erupt if it sticks with its plan to dump neutralized VX into the Delaware River.

A spokesman for the Army's Chemical Materials Agency (CMA), however, says the proposal raises logistical and financial questions that might make it difficult to accept.

In a Sept. I letter, a dozen activist groups urged Army Assistant Secretary for Acquisitions, Logistics and
Technology Claude Bolton to construct a supercritical water oxidation (SCWO) facility at the Army's Newport Chemical Depot, and use it to destroy the millions of gallons of caustic wastewater that are expected to result from the ongoing demilitarization of 1,269 tons of VX.

When the Army is finished destroying wastewater, known as hydrolysate, it could then move the SCWO units to the Blue Grass Army Depot in Richmond, KY, which was already planning to destroy hydrolysate that will be produced there in the coming years. The Army is required by the international treaty known as the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) to destroy all its chemical weapons by an extended deadline of 2012.

The proposal is the latest attempt to persuade the Army to abandon its plan to transport an estimated four
million gallons of VX hydrolysate from Newport to Deepwater, NJ, where it would undergo secondary treatment at the DuPont Chambers Works facility and be discharged into the Delaware River. Environmentalists and other citizen activists have condemned the plan, saying it poses immeasurable threats to both human and aquatic life. Lawmakers at both the state and federal level have vowed to defeat it (Defense Environment Alert, July 26, p 15).

The activists' letter lists several advantages of destroying the Newport hydrolysate on site using SCWO.
They say the plan would eliminate the dangers of transporting the hydrolysate across several states. The Army could save costs by using the SCWO units at two of its chemical weapons depots. It would also eliminate the risk to workers at the DuPont facility who would have to process the hydrolysate, as well as risks to the environment.

But the Army's attitude is to "defend the position," no matter how many reasonable objections the public raises, said Craig Williams, director of the Chemical Weapons Working Group (CWWG), at a Sept. I telephone press conference to announce the new plan. "Everyone is comfortable with [the plan] except for the Office for the Elimination of Chemical Weapons, which is saluting smartly and carrying on," he said.

Williams pointed out that the Army had originally planned to use SCWO to destroy hydrolysate at the Newport site. But plans changed in January 2002, when several senators asked the Army to consider ways to speed up chemical demilitarization to make sure the stockpiles did not become a terrorist target following the September I I th attacks. "The decision was made within the Army to pursue the off-site shipment/disposal option ... with little, if any, study to support the assumption that this would be faster or cheaper," Williams said.

If the Army does not back down from its Delaware River disposal plan, it can expect lawsuits that will likely snare the project in legal red tape until far past the 2012 deadline, said Tracy Carluccio of the Delaware Riverkeeper Network, a Pennsylvania-based activist group. The letter points out that U.S. law forbids the transport of chemical weapons across state lines, and the CWC defines chemical weapons as "toxic chemicals and their precursors," whether "together or separately."

"Many of the identified constituents contained in the hydrolysate meet this definition," the letter states.

However, the CMA spokesman says the Delaware River disposal plan remains the Army's preferred alternative, pending the results of an ongoing study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and EPA on its ecological impacts.

The Army evaluated the SCWO disposal option at Newport in 2000-01, and encountered several problems, the spokesman explains. Nozzles and valves on the SCWO test units became clogged and liners were corroded. The Army began publicly considering the option of transporting the hydrolysate for off-site disposal as early as June 2001 months before the September I I th attacks, the spokesman says.

Moreover, installing SCWO units at Newport and using them to destroy the hydrolysate would cost the Army about $300 million and add several years to the project, he adds. The CMA spokesman was unable to say how much it would cost to transport the 4 million gallons of hydrolysate to New Jersey for secondary treatment and disposal, citing federal regulations against discussing procurement costs.

However, the Delaware River disposal option would cost less than $300 million, he says.