By JEFF MONTGOMERY
Staff reporter
04/22/2004

The DuPont Co. wants to add low-level radioactive wastewater and infectious wastes to a list of substances eligible for treatment at the company's plant near the Delaware Memorial Bridge, according to a company filing with New Jersey regulators.

DuPont's proposals were part of a state permit renewal application submitted last summer to New Jersey's Department of Environmental Protection. The News Journal obtained a copy of the document this week.

In the application, DuPont said the company "may consider" the treatment of regulated infectious wastes and low-level radioactive wastewater as a future part of the commercial waste business. The additions would comply with state laws and regulations governing medical wastes and radiation protection, DuPont said.

The low-level radioactive wastewater and infectious liquids would be in addition to a chemical weapons waste disposal plan and other waste markets now under consideration for the Chambers Works plant in Deepwater, N.J.

In the chemical weapons project, DuPont would treat up to 4 million gallons of caustic byproducts from the destruction of a VX nerve agent stockpile in Newport, Ind., and discharge the wastewater into the Delaware River.

DuPont's regular 5-year permit for Deepwater expired in January. New Jersey has allowed operations to continue under an extension, pending action on the renewal application. Company officials described the document Wednesday as "one of the most extensive permits in New Jersey."

"We acknowledge that the new permit may require additional requirements," by regulators, the company said Wednesday in a written statement. "We look forward to working with NJDEP going forward on the renewal process."

The Chambers Works treatment plant is situated in New Jersey and has operated only with New Jersey permits, but its treated wastewater emerges from a riverbottom pipe well inside Delaware. Regulators in Delaware began examining their authority over the discharge after the chemical weapons waste proposal surfaced.

Regulators in both states and the Delaware River Basin Commission have questioned whether DuPont has the necessary environmental permits to discharge the military waste. Some regulators and citizens groups have expressed concern that the project could open the door to additional chemical weapons wastes being disposed of at the plant.

"There's been a suspicion that the Army project really was the camel's nose under the tent," said Seth Ross, a Delaware Nature Society member who helped develop the group's recently announced opposition to the chemical weapon waste project.

Radioactivity-tainted wastewater has emerged as a public issue across southern New Jersey since 2002, when a Gloucester Township federal cleanup site proposed pumping uranium-tainted and radium-tainted wastewater to a county sewage treatment plant. Camden County, N.J., last month filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court to block the treatment plan, which would have sent treated discharge into the Delaware River well upstream of Chambers Works.

Chambers Works has released as much as 3.8 million pounds of toxic chemicals into the river yearly. But routine public toxic release reports are not required on hundreds of chemicals that DuPont's renewal application said are released or might be released to the Delaware River in relatively small daily amounts.

The application lists about 300 chemicals and compounds that DuPont said are known to be present in the plant's discharge to the Delaware River. Another table in the draft permit identifies more than 1,000 other chemicals that "may be" found in the plant's discharge, although New Jersey now requires testing for about 180 substances, ranging from commonplace materials such as oil and grease to carcinogens.

Delaware Water Resources Director Kevin C. Donnelly said the variety of wastes handled by the plant warrants close examination by environmental regulators.

"I have to think that the number of chemicals reflects the broad set of clients that Chambers Works has and continues to solicit," Donnelly said. "I would say it's unusual for most of the treatment facilities ... that we have experience with."

Delaware Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control officials said recently that up to 79 percent of the phosphorus compounds from the VX wastewater would pass through Chambers Works largely untreated. Effects on the river and aquatic life, DNREC said, have yet to be studied adequately.

"I came to the conclusion that Chambers Works has no special advantage," DNREC Secretary John A. Hughes said. "You can dilute it by throwing it over Niagara Falls. We're talking about treatment, and we don't see this. The untreated breakdown products are still of sufficient concentration and unknowability to give us concern."