Indiana VX test planned for today
Question of N.J. disposal remains

By JEFF MONTGOMERY
Staff reporter
07/14/2004

Army contractors were scheduled to begin a five-day simulation today at an Indiana plant built to neutralize 1,269 tons of deadly VX nerve agent, while debates continue over a proposal to send the resulting wastes to a treatment plant on the Delaware River.

A military spokesman said the trial run - using water in place of the chemical-weapon agent - could lead to full operations as early as September at the Newport Chemical Depot west of Indianapolis. The process is expected to cost about $646 million, including construction, operation and demolition of the plant at the project's end.

Current treatment plans, opposed by the governors of Delaware and New Jersey, call for shipping as much as 4 million gallons of caustic VX wastewater from Indiana to a DuPont Co. industrial wastewater plant at the foot of the Delaware Memorial Bridge in New Jersey.

When asked if DuPont's Chambers Works plant remains the planned destination for the neutralized chemical, Jeff Lindblad, a spokesman for the Army Chemical Material Agency, said, "Basically, yes." But the option remains for using a tank farm for storing the treated waste at the Indiana plant if the DuPont plan is blocked, he said.

Delaware environmental officials have opposed the project, citing concerns that some potentially toxic compounds will escape untreated into the river. New Jersey regulators have said if DuPont handles the Army wastes, the company would face new and as yet undetermined permit and monitoring requirements.

A spokeswoman for the national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Tuesday federal scientists have given a "top priority" to evaluating human and environmental health risks posed by the DuPont plan. Members of Congress in Delaware and New Jersey requested the CDC review after state and public objections earlier this year.

"We're actively working on this, and our scientists are doing this on a daily basis," said Stephanie Creel, a CDC spokeswoman.

DuPont spokesman Anthony Farina said, "We are awaiting the CDC report before anything else."

Jeff Workman, a hazardous-waste permit manager with the Indiana Department of Environmental Management, said state regulators will closely monitor the Army's trial run. Lindblad said the week of tests will include mock emergencies and malfunctions.

"We're trying to get a feel for how things would be during full-scale operations, getting a feel for the setup as though they're doing actual neutralization," Workman said.

Indiana officials are considering an Army request for a permit to store treated wastewater at the Newport Chemical Depot for more than 90 days, while also awaiting a decision on the DuPont proposal, Workman said. Indiana's governor and Congress eventually must approve the full startup.

"Basically we have to feel comfortable that they're ready to go. Probably we're going to want to know where they're going to ship it," Workman said. "It would be my guess that they have to demonstrate that they have the capacity to store what they're going to treat and be prepared to shut down if they're going to exceed that."

VX ranks among the nation's most deadly chemical weapons, with a single droplet potentially lethal. Newport's process would break the chemical down into a soup mostly containing a common industrial chemical with qualities similar to drain cleaner. Delaware officials are concerned that two other chemical byproducts, ethyl methylphosphonic acid and methylphosphonic acid, could pose a threat to aquatic life and could promote algal blooms in the river. The blooms would deplete oxygen levels in the water, potentially further endangering fish.

Delaware officials also have questioned whether an international treaty allows the flushing away of the chemical weapon byproducts, instead of a more complete breakdown.

DuPont already is treating caustic wastewater from the disposal of blister-forming mustard gas stockpiles at Aberdeen, Md. Company officials in May provided the Delaware River Basin Commission with research showing that the 7-million-gallon mustard gas waste disposal project was not harming water quality.

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