By JEFF MONTGOMERY
and PATRICK JACKSON
Staff reporters
04/01/2004
Delaware's Senate approved a resolution Wednesday urging the Army to abandon a plan to send nerve agent disposal wastes to a treatment plant near the Delaware Memorial Bridge in New Jersey.
Backers of the resolution called the 17-0 vote a clear signal of community disapproval. Four lawmakers abstained from voting on the nonbinding resolution, which will go to the House.
The resolution focused on a Defense Department proposal to send as much as 4 million gallons of caustic wastewater from an Army VX stockpile in Newport, Ind., to an industrial wastewater treatment plant at the DuPont Co. Chambers Works in Deepwater, N.J.
Delaware lawmakers acted the same day a letter from eight Delaware and New Jersey congressmen was made public asking the Centers for Disease Control for a formal review of the treatment project. Legislators said CDC comments were not made public last month during Army-sponsored community meetings.
"It is important that our constituents have the benefit of CDC's expertise in determining if there are public health risks involved in the Army's proposal," the letter said. It was signed by Delaware Sens. Joe Biden and Tom Carper, and Rep. Mike Castle, and New Jersey Sens. Frank R. Lautenberg and Jon Corzine, and Reps. Robert E. Andrews, Frank A. LoBiondo and Jim Saxton.
Col. Jesse L. Barber, alternative technologies and approaches manager for the Army Chemical Materials Agency, said late Wednesday he had yet to read the Delaware Senate resolution.
"We would consider what the resolution says and factor that into our decisions," Barber said while attending a community briefing on the project near the military stockpile in Indiana.
Barber also said his agency is considering a proposal for independent monitoring of the river during the treatment project to help reassure the community. Preliminary talks have begun with the Academy of Natural Sciences, a national research and education center based in Philadelphia.
"I thought of it as an additional measure to show the citizens that we are trying to safely and effectively do the project," Barber said. "That would go a long way."
Anthony Farina, a spokesman for DuPont, said after the Senate vote the company would support an additional CDC review, and described the academy as "widely respected, locally known as well as locally located."
Army and DuPont officials have said they can complete the two- to four-year project without threatening human or aquatic life. Some environmental groups have opposed the plan, citing what they say are inadequately studied risks from chemicals formed during the breakdown of VX, a nerve-disrupting compound lethal in doses as small as a droplet.
A similar project was withdrawn in Ohio last year in the face of community and government opposition.
DuPont already is treating a different type of wastewater at Chambers Works as a subcontractor for a $1.1 billion Army project to eliminate neutralized waste from a mustard gas stockpile in Aberdeen, Md.
Gregory Patterson, a spokesman for Gov. Ruth Ann Minner, said late Wednesday that Minner is awaiting a state Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control review of the project before taking a position. Although DuPont's plant is in New Jersey, the operation discharges treated wastes underwater in a portion of the river well inside Delaware.
Sen. Margaret Rose Henry, D-Wilmington East, and Rep. Gregory F. Lavelle, R-Sharpley, jointly sponsored the Delaware resolution, which cleared the Senate with little debate after an attempt to table it failed.
Alan Muller, who directs the environmental group Green Delaware, said the Senate vote reflects bipartisan concern about the plan.
"I think the reality is that the support for this is purely limited to the Army and DuPont," Muller said.
Reach Jeff Montgomery at 678-4277 or jmontgomery@delawareonline.com.
Reach Patrick Jackson at 678-4274 or pjackson@delawareonline.com