Bush bill stalls VX disposal proposal

By DANIEL WALSH Staff Writer, (856) 794-5111

Published: Friday, October 20, 2006

The U.S. Army has been delayed once again in its efforts to dispose of a lethal but neutralized nerve agent's byproduct along the Delaware River.

President Bush signed a broad military spending bill Wednesday that included a provision calling for further study of the proposal to dispose of the VX nerve agent's wastewater at a DuPont plant in Deepwater, Salem County.

The law calls for the federal Government Accountability Office to review an Army cost-benefit analysis released April 25 to determine whether it would be better to dispose of the waste onsite at a weapons depot in Newport, Ind.

In its analysis, the Army dismissed several other disposal methods as more costly and lengthy than the plan for treatment at DuPont's Deepwater plant, the largest commercial wastewater-treatment plant in North America.

"The Army's persistent efforts to dump partially treated VX -- one of the world's most deadly nerve agents -- into the Delaware River are simply wrong and ill-advised," New Jersey Gov. Jon S. Corzine said in a written statement. "The Army should take note: New Jersey is no dumping ground. The Delaware River should be treasured and protected, not harmed and mistreated."

U.S. Rep. Jim Saxton, R-3rd, inserted the language into the spending bill in May. Along with U.S. Reps. Frank LoBiondo, R-2nd, and Rob Andrews, D-1st, Saxton has consistently opposed the plan, and the three have taken several steps to delay it. Corzine said he hopes the delay is made permanent.

The Army's plan calls for chemically neutralizing the liquid nerve agent in Newport -- a process that already has begun -- and trucking its caustic wastewater byproduct to New Jersey for treatment and eventual disposal into the Delaware River.

The Army has been turned down in this effort before, when government officials in Dayton, Ohio, rejected a plan for treatment there.

The federal Environmental Protection Agency and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have dropped opposition to the project. A DuPont study found marine life would be unaffected, and the head of Rutgers University's Haskin Shellfish Research Laboratory informally backed that assessment.

The Army began destroying liquid VX last year after being directed to eliminate the nation's chemical stockpiles to comply with a 1997 international treaty. VX, an agent so lethal that a single drop can kill a person, is destroyed through mixing it with sodium hydroxide in a heated chemical reactor.

Critics have questioned whether trace amounts of VX or its toxic byproducts could slip through the treatment process and into the Delaware estuary. Delaware Bay fishermen have been particularly concerned that DuPont's discharges could affect marine life.

To e-mail Daniel Walsh at The Press: DWalsh@pressofac.com