DuPont plan for neutralized VX questioned
Plant near Del. Memorial Bridge would treat wastewater

DOVER -- A sometimes skeptical state fisheries panel grilled DuPont Co. officials Wednesday night on its plans to treat neutralized chemical weapon byproducts at a commercial wastewater plant along the Delaware River.

"You're going to be discharging way up the river in an estuary that really can't stand a whole lot more [pollution]," said Lawrence S. Foley of Odessa, a member of the state Advisory Council on Tidal Finfisheries. "What a lot of people are looking at is not just what's going on right now, but what could happen. You might get a contract to do a lot more."

DuPont wants an Army contract to treat 2 million or more gallons of wastewater from a plant in Indiana built to neutralize an Army stockpile of VX, one of the world's deadliest chemical agents.

The highly caustic liquid would go to the industrial wastewater treatment plant at DuPont's Chambers Works in Deepwater, N.J., near the foot of the Delaware Memorial Bridge. The plant can discharge up to 17 million gallons of treated industrial wastewater a day.

"We have a lot of operational controls at that plant. We have a lot of experience," said Ann Masse, a DuPont manager responsible for safety, health and environmental issues, at the meeting held at the Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control's headquarters. "This technology is designed specifically for this waste stream."

Army and company officials have insisted that the plant would break down or capture most harmful wastes in the byproducts from Newport, Ind. An Environmental Protection Agency study recently agreed, after DuPont tightened its treatment plan under pressure from Delaware and New Jersey regulators.

DuPont's plant uses patented combinations of activated carbon and specialized microbes to break down chemicals in water, and ranks among the largest contract industrial wastewater plants in the world. The company's treatment-for-hire operation got little public attention, however, before the Army proposal.

"This has put a spotlight on you," said advisory council member Bernard L. Pankowski of Wilmington. "What you're saying is, 'People, relax, because we're not doing anything different from what we do 24/7. It's still coming out the same as all the other junk we put in there.' "

Masse disagreed, pointing out that DuPont's plant must regularly test the toxicity of its entire discharge for immediate hazards and long-term threats to aquatic life.

"I think we run a really first-class operation," Masse said.

DuPont already has treated several million gallons of a neutralized mustard agent, a different type of weaponized chemical, from a storage site in Aberdeen, Md.

Army and company officials are awaiting a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report on the VX treatment plan, due as early as this month.

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