By LAWRENCE HAJNA
Cherry Hill (N.J.) Courier-Post
03/18/2004

CARNEYS POINT, N.J. -- South Jersey residents attended a meeting Wednesday to learn more about a plan the Army and the DuPont Co. have to treat the wastewater byproduct of a neutralized Cold War-era nerve agent.

Many left unconvinced that the plan is safe.

"I find it a disgrace the way the Delaware Bay is being defamed. It's being destroyed," said John DiOrio, a 48-year-old corrections officer from Maurice River Township, Cumberland County. "I think it's time to stop all dumping in the Delaware Bay and the river."

DiOrio was one of about 300 people who attended the session, which the Army scheduled after elected officials and residents learned of the plan from newspaper reports earlier this year.

The Army plans to destroy more than 1,200 tons of VX nerve agent at its Newport Chemical Depot in west-central Indiana, where it has been stored since then-President Richard Nixon issued a ban on chemical weapons in 1969. The waste would be shipped to DuPont's facility near Deepwater, N.J., for further processing before it is discharged into the Delaware River.

Caroline Boucher, 39, of Penns Grove, questioned why the waste can't be treated at the Indiana site.

"We have to live here. We have to smell the odors every day," Boucher said. DuPont "has not demonstrated the capability to take care of anything else."

Amy Simmerman, a spokeswoman for U.S. Rep. Rob Andrews, D-Haddon Heights, also called for the wastewater to be handled in Indiana. However, an Army spokesman said Indiana has no facilities capable of treating the wastewater.

"The disposal of our chemical weapons is right and necessary. But this plan would dispose of these wastes in the wrong place and in the wrong way."

"There are too many unanswered environmental questions," she said. These include the possibility that the nerve gas components could reconstitute.

John Strait, site manager for DuPont's Chambers Works chemical facility, said the agent cannot reformulate in the waste stream.

Carneys Point residents Beverly and Thurston Howard said they are concerned but confident in DuPont's ability to treat the wastewater. Thurston Howard is a retired DuPont mechanic.

"I feel they can handle it," said Beverly Howard, a 62-year-old homemaker. "I have a lot of faith in DuPont. They do a lot of great things."

Col. Jesse Barber of the Army's Chemical Materials Agency said DuPont has the capability to treat the wastewater safely. He said he hopes the VX destruction process will begin in June.

The Army accelerated destruction plans of its chemical weapon stockpiles after 9/11 to reduce potential terrorist targets.

The Army will neutralize the VX, an oily liquid, by mixing it with hot sodium hydroxide and hot water. That will create between 2 million and 4 million gallons of a caustic wastewater known as hydrolysate. DuPont's Secure Environmental Treatment plant, the largest industrial wastewater treatment plant in North America, will remove most of the organic chemicals and salts left from the neutralization process and discharge the remaining water into the Delaware River.

DuPont expects to receive about two tanker trucks per day for up to three years from the Newport depot. The Army said it will not send any hydrolysate to DuPont if it contains detectable traces of nerve agent.

The hydrolysate is no different than many of the chemical wastes the Secure Environmental Treatment plant handles every day, DuPont officials said.

"The proposed project can be completed in a safe and environmentally sound manner and pose no unique hazards," Strait said.

During an information session before the public comment period Wednesday, the Army showed transportation routes and explained how the Secure Environmental Treatment plant operates. The preferred route, outlined in a recent DuPont technical assessment, calls for the hydrolysate to be trucked via Interstate 80 through Ohio and Pennsylvania to the New Jersey Turnpike. It then would go to the DuPont facility near the Delaware Memorial Bridge.

DuPont says it will have emergency response teams along the route, and it has calculated the risk of an accident and release of hydrolysate at 1 in 13,000.