By JEFF MONTGOMERY
Staff reporter
04/16/2004

Delaware and New Jersey regulators on Thursday termed "premature" a DuPont Co. proposal for an independent third party to monitor pollution from a chemical weapons waste disposal project at a New Jersey plant near the Delaware Memorial Bridge.

DuPont endorsed the outside review in an open letter advertisement responding to citizen concerns about treatment of caustic wastewater from an Army VX nerve agent disposal project in Newport, Ind.

The Army wants to give DuPont a contract to treat up to 4 million gallons of the material at its Chambers Works wastewater plant. Payment terms have not been disclosed.

DuPont said it would await the results of a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention evaluation before accepting a contract. But the company and Army also recommended the Philadelphia-based Academy of Natural Sciences conduct a study of the effect on the Delaware River once treatment begins.

"It's contrary to our position that we don't want the project to go forward as proposed," said Kevin C. Donnelly, water resources director for Delaware's Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control, said when asked about the third-party recommendation.

"It's premature to talk about monitoring after the fact," said Sam Wolfe, deputy commissioner for regulation at the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection. "What we need is to assess the environmental impact before DuPont starts accepting" the material for treatment.

Last week, the governors of both states called on the Army to treat the wastes near the Indiana stockpile instead of shipping the material 1,000 miles to DuPont. Both cited risks from new discharges into the river, inadequate environmental studies and evidence that DuPont's process would do little to remove two obscure compounds from the waste.

DuPont spokesman Anthony Farina said the company considered the CDC study an important response to public concerns about the project. "We're certainly confident in our science and the assessments we've completed," Farina said.

Newport stores about 4 percent of the nation's stockpile of VX, one of the world's deadliest chemical weapons. The Army late last month sent a small amount of the Newport VX to Maryland for a final analysis prior to the start of a neutralization project now expected to begin in late summer.

Col. Jesse L. Barber, alternative technologies and approaches manager for the Army Chemical Materials Agency, said he hoped to discuss the study as early as today with the Academy of Natural Sciences. But he also said the military is prepared to build four 400,000-gallon tanks at Newport for long-term storage of neutralized VX if the DuPont plan falls through.

The military is working to destroy the nation's stockpile of chemical weapons to comply with an international treaty.

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