OPINION Al Mascitti

By AL MASCITTI
05/11/2004

If the U.S. Army and the DuPont Co. really cared what the public thought about the proposal to get rid of VX through the company's Chambers Works plant, they would have worked to foster an atmosphere of trust.

When you're trying to persuade people that, despite the recurring phrase "deadly nerve agent," there's no danger in disposing of neutralized waste, you would want to err on the side of openness, wouldn't you? Especially since the chemical industry has a long history of minimizing waste disposal problems that later turned into Superfund sites.

As it turns out, any such effort in the VX matter would have been too late.

Reporter Jeff Montgomery revealed in Saturday's News Journal that 800 gallons of neutralized nerve agent went through treatment at Chambers Works between 1994 and 1996, without the knowledge of regulators in either Delaware or New Jersey.

This follows the realization that "treatment" is an overstatement for much of the process that the VX byproducts will go through. The main thing DuPont will do with much of the caustic liquid is dilute it before dumping it in the Delaware River.

Documents turned up by Montgomery even call into question DuPont's stated motivation for seeking the contract. CEO Chad Holliday said at the company's annual meeting last month that the proposal was made in the interest of national security, not for profit. (It seems the Army is worried that the nerve agent, currently sitting at a base in Indiana, could be a terrorist target.)

A chemical engineer at Chambers Works told Montgomery that the company decided to take on the task after 9/11. But Montgomery turned up a consultant's report for the Army that attributed DuPont's interest to "changes in the management, potential for higher revenues [in the millions of dollars], and more effective public outreach efforts." That report was written in June 2001, three months before the terrorist attacks.

The absurdity of the "terrorist threat" line was made even plainer last week, when energy company BP started the approval process for a proposed $500 million terminal for shipments of liquefied natural gas along the Delaware River in Logan Township, N.J., opposite Claymont.

What would be a more inviting target for terrorists, a nerve agent stockpile secured on an Army base, or ships full of liquefied natural gas traveling underneath the Delaware Memorial Bridge every day?

Holliday told stockholders the VX contract would add only 0.05 percent to the company's annual revenues. He failed to mention how much the company would profit on doing little more than flushing wastewater down the river.

If the proposed contract does nothing else, at least it has spotlighted the fact that DuPont is using Chambers Works as a toilet, with the Delaware River as the cesspool. Its most recent application to New Jersey for permission to treat waste at the plant lists about 1,600 different chemicals, 150 of which require monitoring.

That requires a lot of public trust - maybe more than a company that accepted VX byproducts that the Army listed as "waste from cleaning of laboratory equipment" deserves.