By JEFF MONTGOMERY
Staff reporter
03/16/2004

A state scientist said Monday that Delaware regulators are studying safety and environmental questions raised by a DuPont Co. plan to treat military nerve agent VX disposal wastes at an industrial wastewater plant in New Jersey. The facility is across the Delaware River from New Castle.

The Army has scheduled public meetings on the project this week in New Jersey and Delaware.

Concerns raised by state officials and citizens groups include hazards to aquatic life and risks of transporting caustic wastewater from a federal stockpile in Indiana to Deepwater, N.J. VX is one of the military's deadliest chemical weapons.

DuPont reported earlier this month that researchers found little risk in shipping or treating wastes from an Army nerve agent disposal process at the company's 40 million gallon-per-day wastewater plant near Delaware Memorial Bridge.

"There is nothing exotic about this waste," said Todd Owens, a DuPont Co. engineer. "We take in highly corrosive hazardous waste every day."

But Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control officials as recently as Monday said DuPont's study left some questions unresolved. Among the concerns, state officials said, are suggestions that minuscule amounts of VX could linger in wastes and survive treatment, eventually reaching the river.

Liquid VX is so deadly that a fraction of a drop on the skin is likely to be fatal, experts said.

"There are questions about the extent to which that process is actually able to deal with a couple of major byproducts of the VX neutralization process," said Richard W. Greene, a scientist with DNREC's wastewater section. "If it's not really doing much in the way of treatment for those compounds, the logical question is, why ship it halfway across the country?"

Environmental groups in Delaware and New Jersey have said DuPont's research failed to consider some risks, and failed to precisely reproduce conditions likely at the plant during the three-year treatment project. Greene said separately that DNREC has concerns that the process also can increase phosphorus discharges to the river, which could promote algae blooms.

Similar issues were raised in Ohio last year, when public opposition led the Army to abandon plans to send the same material to a Dayton wastewater disposal system.

"What the army itself classifies as a militarily unique compound is going to be dumped in the river, and nobody's done any studies on it, other than computer modeling," said John Kearney, who represents the Clean Air Council in Delaware.

Though DuPont's treatment plant is in New Jersey, its treated wastewater discharges within Delaware. Greene said Delaware will have a role to play in New Jersey's upcoming review of the company's treatment plant and five-year river discharge permit, up for renewal this year.

Neutralization methods at the military's Newport, Ind., stockpile will "tear apart" every molecule of VX, Owens said, leaving the resulting waste safe for specialized transport. Remaining substances will be neutralized or treated in New Jersey; compounds reaching the river would be about as toxic as table salt, Owens said.

Army officials chose DuPont, Owens said, because of the company's unique treatment methods and experience.

"If you look at what we're putting out in our effluent, we're talking about less than one part per million. You're thousands of times less than the toxicity of salt. It really does prove that there's really no significant impact," Owens said.

The United States has agreed to destroy its stockpiles of VX under an international treaty. More than 1,200 tons of VX are set to be destroyed.

Reach Jeff Montgomery at 678-4277 or jmontgomery@delawareonline.com.