By Tammy
Webber
The Army is investigating whether hazardous materials are buried at the Newport
Chemical Depot, a military installation where the nation's largest stockpile
of VX nerve agent is being destroyed.
Officials want to make sure they know what's on the grounds of the 64-year-old
former weapons-production plant because the Army could turn the site over
to Vermillion County within the next several years, possibly for use as an
industrial park.
A federal panel voted this year to close the depot once the VX is removed
and the plant is dismantled. More than 250,000 gallons of VX, stored at the
depot since production was halted in 1969, is supposed be destroyed within
three years.
A Base Realignment and Closure Commission report released this year mentioned
the possibility that VX munitions are buried at Newport.
Cathy Collins, Newport's chief engineer, said the Army doesn't believe it
will turn up VX but is taking extra precautions because of the history of
the 7,100-acre facility, where VX and other weapons were produced between
1941 and the mid-1970s.
"We're being as cautious as we can be. We don't want to leave any stone unturned,"
she said.
The Army is aware of at least four burial areas at Newport, including one
site where decontaminated gas masks, gloves, vials and scrap metal from projectiles
associated with VX production are buried. Other areas were found to contain
waste from production of TNT and other depot operations. The Army conducted
extensive groundwater and soil sampling in those areas, and no chemical weapons
or residues were found.
A former Newport civilian worker, Tom Burch, said that when VX was produced
in the 1960s, depot workers would drain faulty munitions of VX and the liquid
would be neutralized before being placed in a well more than a mile below
the ground. Burch, who worked as a VX analyst at an Army lab at Newport,
said the munitions also were decontaminated before being buried.
While Collins and the Army's Chemical Materials Agency downplayed the potential
of finding chemical weapons buried at the site, citizen watchdog groups welcomed
the investigation.
"Now is the time to take a look and see what else could be there," said Elizabeth
Crowe from the Chemical Weapons Working Group, based in Kentucky. "I don't
think anyone in the community wants to find anything by accident when (the
site) is being developed."
Old chemical weapons have surfaced before -- decades after they were buried.
In Spring Valley, a community near American University in Washington, D.C.,
World War I-era munitions with mustard agent were unearthed during construction
of an upscale housing development in the 1990s.
The Army has hired a contractor to help it in the Newport investigation,
which includes researching historical records and talking to former employees
who might recall where waste was buried, the depot commander, Lt. Col. Scott
Kimmell, said.
Surprises aren't unheard of at the depot.
In January, contractors dismantling the old production plant confirmed that
liquid found in a small tank was VX -- a drop of which could kill a person
in minutes.
Several years ago, a longtime worker told Collins that crews about 20 years
earlier had found empty land mines while excavating an old scrap yard at
the depot. Army officials determined the mines had been shipped to the depot
in the 1960s to be filled with VX. They also concluded the mines were never
used.
Because of poor record-keeping, it's difficult to know the location and extent
of all contamination at the nation's military bases, and waste often is found
at former testing and training sites, said Jeffrey Smart, a historian at the
U.S. Army Research, Development and Engineering Command in Maryland.
"Most sites, particularly in the Word War I and World War II time frame,
did not focus on documenting disposal operations," Smart said. "They focused
on production, training and shipment of items, but not really on what to
do with ones we don't want.
"They used to think if there was a leaking or old chemical weapon, the best
way to make it safe was to bury it six feet underground."
A 1996 Army report listed three Indiana sites -- Newport, Camp Atterbury
and Crane Division, Naval Surface Warfare Center -- as areas where chemical
warfare waste might have been buried.
At Atterbury, now an Indiana National Guard site, the concern was that mustard
agent might have been burned in a small area, leaving harmful residue, and
that a small vial found there might contain live chemical agent. But a 1998
study determined there was no chemical weapons contamination, Atterbury officials
said.
At Crane, one of the nation's largest military arsenals, a chemical weapons
burial ground with mustard bombs and some radioactive waste was excavated
in the 1970s and 1980s. Groundwater contamination at the site is being monitored,
said Tom Linson, an official with the Indiana Department of Environmental
Management.
Those sites aren't as great a concern as Newport, because they're not going
to be turned over to the public, he said.
But because VX was the only chemical weapon produced in Newport -- the depot
also produced heavy water for the nation's first nuclear bombs, TNT and the
plastic explosive RDX -- and was produced in the 1960s, the possibility of
undocumented chemical weapons is remote, Linson said.
Still, "it is absolutely an issue at Newport because we know the base is
destined for closure," Linson said. "We know (the site) will become potential
public property, and we can't say there haven't been surprises at Newport.
As thorough a job as has been done, we've still found a few things that had
been initially overlooked.
"Hopefully, the number of surprises in the future will be small, but we can't
rule it out, so we proceed with caution."
Ed Cole, executive director of the Vermillion County Economic Development
Council, said he hopes any contamination won't delay the base's transfer
to the county.
"This is very important to us, because we are going to have such a drop in
employment once the doors close," Cole said of the depot, the county's largest
employer. "We plan to get up to speed as soon as we can."
VX and other chemical weapons production was banned in the United States
in 1969. VX has since been stored at Newport.
Call Star reporter Tammy Webber at (317) 444-6212.
