By JEFF MONTGOMERY
Staff reporter
03/31/2004

An influential research study "grossly overestimated the risks" posed by nerve agent disposal wastes the DuPont Co. wants to discharge into the Delaware River, according to an Army consultants' report released Tuesday.

The consultants said they were unable to locate evidence that a Northwestern University scientist used to support a claim that one byproduct of the treatment process could cause cancer. The chemical would be in wastewater DuPont wants to pipe from its Deepwater, N.J., plant along the Delaware River to an underwater discharge point in the river, which is part of Delaware.

Area residents and environmental groups expressed concerns about the proposed project at hearings held recently by the Army and DuPont in New Jersey and Delaware.

"There continues to be massive amounts of misinformation going around," said Col. Jesse L. Barber, alternative technologies and approaches manager for the Army Chemical Materials Agency. "I refuse to allow the public to be railroaded into the fear camp of unknowns. I prefer to deal with knowns."

To meet terms of an international treaty, the United States must destroy more than 1,200 tons of VX, one of the world's deadliest chemical weapons. Defense Department officials want to send the DuPont plant up to 4 million gallons of wastewater from a proposed VX nerve agent neutralization project in Newport, Ind.

Treated liquid from the process, called hydrolysate, would be discharged into the river over two to four years. New Jersey's environmental agency, which currently oversees the DuPont wastewater operation, is reviewing the proposal, as is Delaware's Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control. DNREC officials have said they are looking closely at potential toxic effects on the river and concerns that some compounds could increase the risk of algal blooms.

Bruce Rittmann, a civil, chemical and biological engineer at Northwestern, said in a report last year that the Army-backed project failed to adequately consider risks posed by VX residues and the possibility that the agent could re-form in waste liquids. Rittmann's views played a major role in a federal decision last fall to abandon a plan to send neutralized VX wastes to a publicly owned wastewater plant near Dayton, Ohio.

In the Army's report, Virginia-based Mitretek Systems Inc. rejected warnings that traces of the nerve agent could survive treatment or spontaneously re-form in wastewater.

"It would actually be easier to buy the base chemicals and do it from scratch," Barber said when asked about Rittmann's findings. "You would need a chemical processing plant to be able to pull the raw material out of the hydrolysate and create some amount of VX."

Mitretek also described Rittmann's reference to one report of toxic risks in a VX breakdown product as "suspicious" and "probably erroneous."

Rittmann said Mitretek could be correct about the missing reference to one compound, ethyl methylphosphonic acid. But he also said that he stood by his general findings.

"I came to the conclusion that there's enough there to warrant looking at it carefully," Rittmann said. He said he was pleased that the Army's follow-up study addressed the issues he raised.

Opponents of the disposal plan in Delaware and surrounding states have cited Rittmann's findings as reasons to scuttle the Deepwater project.

John Kearney, who represents the nonprofit Clean Air Council in Delaware, questioned the Army's decision to use Mitretek for what was described as an independent review of Rittmann's work and other reports. The same company has worked extensively for the government, and was hired in 1999 to assess disposal systems for assembled chemical weapons, Kearney said.

"That isn't independent," he said. "We're to the point where we have a severe credibility issue."

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