Newport -- The Army's plan to dump into New Jersey's Delaware River treated wastewater left over from the destruction of a deadly nerve agent may be headed for another delay.

As part of a broader military bill up for a vote Thursday in the U.S. House of Representatives, lawmakers were expected to approve a provision requiring the Government Accountability Office to study the Army's plan for DuPont Co. to treat and dispose of the waste.

The provision would also prevent the disposal plan from starting earlier than February 2007.

The Army last year began neutralizing VX nerve agent -- a single droplet of which can kill a person -- at western Indiana's Newport Chemical Depot.

To date, that project has destroyed nearly 20 percent of the original stockpile of more than 250,000 gallons of the Cold War-era agent, producing a caustic wastewater called hydrolysate.

The Army, which is required by a 1997 international treaty to destroy the chemical weapon by 2012, has for years been trying to win approval to ship that byproduct to a DuPont facility in Deepwater, N.J., where it would be treated and then discharged into the river.