OPINION
Norman Lockman
River might become clean without VX

By NORMAN LOCKMAN
04/18/2004

The old joke about the Delaware River was that it was too thick to drink and too thin to plow. It was an enormous industrial sewer, smelly, discolored and toxic. It's considerably better now, thanks to the federal Clean Water Act of 1972 that required treatment of toxic wastes being dumped into it.

Now brave-hearted adults and children dip their toes in it along New Castle's Battery Park and at Augustine Beach under the looming cooling towers of the Salem nuclear generating plant over in New Jersey. But a lot of us are still quite skeptical of its suitability for recreational bathing. It's nice to look at but it ain't the Riviera.

Since Colonial times the river has been the watery equivalent of I-95 for big ships and barges. Now the mighty Delaware is considered a "recovering river." You still aren't supposed to eat the fish out of the stretch below Philadelphia, where most of the pollution occurs, but environmentalists are encouraged.

Given all that, it is no wonder that people are outraged at DuPont's desire to pump 4 million gallons of ex-VX nerve agent wastewater into the Delaware over a couple of years. Moreover, most of us weren't pleased to learn that DuPont has been pumping wastewater from deactivated mustard gas into the Delaware for months, or that the company's Chambers Works at the New Jersey end of the Memorial Bridge has been dumping toxic waste from all over the country for 25 years.

Who knew?

Environmental regulators did because they authorized the dumping, but most of us didn't. If we had, we would probably have complained as much as we do about Wilmington spilling sewage into it during rainstorms.

If we don't like the idea of pee in the Delaware, we sure aren't going to be excited about wastewater from deactivated chemical weapons.

DuPont, of course, points out that its Chambers Works toxic waste disposal plant is state of the art, and claims that effluent from it doesn't hurt anything. I wouldn't expect it to claim otherwise, since it makes millions doing it. The public hasn't been paying much attention to Chambers Works for years, which has made it the path of least resistance for people who need to quietly get rid of bad stuff.

VX turned on the lights. It's the deadliest of all nerve agents. People are afraid of anything that has touched it. DuPont executives could drink VX wastewater and it wouldn't convince many that putting it into the Delaware is a good idea.

Political jurisdiction

This isn't a chemistry equation, it's a Delaware political problem. William Penn, in his wisdom, cut a deal that makes the entire width of the river part of Delaware from the Pennsylvania line to the Delaware Bay, so that nothing could move up the river past Delaware without answering to Penn.

That now means that Chambers Works, although it's in New Jersey, is dumping its wastes in Delaware. Many of us don't want it, regardless of its alleged harmlessness. It's a rotten deal, and the more toxic waste DuPont attracts, the rottener it gets.

DuPont now has a huge problem. It isn't just the ex-VX, it's all the rest of the stuff coming out of Chambers Works too. Running independent tests and trotting in experts isn't going to help much. Arguing that DuPont is merely doing its duty to help the Army meet international treaty mandates doesn't cut it either.

DuPont needs to come to grips with the fact that dumping toxic waste residue into a recovering river to increase profits makes it a lousy citizen. It needs to cut it out. What happened to "better things for better living?"

Reach Norman Lockman, a Pulitzer Prize winner, at (302) 324-2857 or nlockman@delawareonline.com.