By JEFF MONTGOMERY
Staff reporter
04/17/2004

Delaware and New Jersey officials raced Friday to complete a second round of objections to a plan for shipping chemical weapon disposal waste to a DuPont plant on the Delaware River. The move came after an Army manager said an opposition statement sent by both governors last week failed to qualify as a formal public comment.

"To me, that's hairsplitting. I want to tell you that the intent of those of us who participated in drafting that letter was to drive a stake in the heart of a vampire," said John A. Hughes, secretary of Delaware's Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control.

"We thought and intended, and I think the governors of both states clearly and unequivocally intended, strong opposition to the project," Hughes said.

Col. Jesse L. Barber, who is managing the Army's disposal project, said he was unable to count the recent letter from Gov. Ruth Ann Minner and Gov. James E. McGreevey among comments due to the agency by Monday because the state's chief executives addressed their concerns to the secretary of the Army rather than the project record in Indiana.

He said that the concerns of Minner and McGreevey will be addressed. However, he said his agency believes DuPont already has the clearances needed to treat the waste. Defense officials now are mainly assessing impacts and accepting comments on the plan to transport the wastewater from an Army depot in Indiana, he said.

"If anyone thinks the governors' letter to the secretary would be considered a submission against the FONSI [transportation plan] that's a bit of a stretch," Barber said. FONSI is the Army's proposed finding of no significant impact.

"What I see in this is that the Army's playing games and trying to find technicalities and loopholes to avoid making the decision that clearly needs to be made," said Maya K. van Rossum, director of the Delaware Riverkeeper Network, a multistate environmental organization.

Van Rossum, who is an attorney, said her organization planned to demand a full environmental impact study on the river despite the Army's claim that it was unnecessary. New Jersey's top environmental officer said earlier this month that his state was weighing the need for the same study.

The Army wants to begin neutralizing a 1,269-ton stockpile of VX nerve agent this summer, potentially shipping 4 million gallons of caustic waste to Deepwater over two to four years. An international treaty obliges the United States to destroy its chemical weapon stores. Barber said the task grew more urgent after the jetliner attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, highlighted the risk of terrorist attack on remaining weapon concentrations.

The joint letter from Minner and McGreevey urged the Army secretary to abandon plans to send the wastes to DuPont and instead dispose of it near the current stockpile in Newport, Ind. Both cited unexamined effects on the river and environment from chemicals likely to pass untreated through DuPont's system. The company has acknowledged that nearly 80 percent of two obscure, phosphorus-type acids would escape to the river, but said in a 350-page report released last week that concentrations would be far below levels that could cause harm.

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

New Jersey regulators said this week that they are unsure if DuPont can receive, treat and discharge the wastes under the company's current permit. Sam Wolfe, Department of Environmental Protection deputy commissioner for regulation in New Jersey, said DuPont has not adequately supported the proposal. He said new and more-stringent discharge limits are under study for the plant.

Agency scientists for both states said DuPont failed to adequately study environmental impacts from the treated wastes. Although the plant is in New Jersey, treated wastes emerge from a discharge point well into the Delaware River, which lies entirely inside Delaware and under Delaware regulatory oversight.

"We found more weaknesses than strengths. We did our science, we think we did it carefully," Hughes said.

DNREC Water Resources Director Kevin Donnelly said the governors' second letter may include objections based on a 1991 permit that appeared to prohibit Chambers Works from discharging wastes to the Delaware River if the wastes originate outside the river's drainage area.

Barber said the finding now up for comment would complete an environmental assessment on the Indiana disposal operation developed in 2002. That assessment began before a destination for the waste was chosen. Since that time the military has proposed, and abandoned in the face of community opposition, a plan to treat the waste at a Dayton, Ohio, treatment plant.

"It seems as though right now the major hurdle the Army is going to have to consider is that the states have the right to regulate the wastes going into our area waters," said Deborah Heaton, conservation director for the Sierra Club Delaware Chapter, a group that opposes the plan. "I really hope that New Jersey and Delaware stick to their guns."

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