138th Year... and still on the job!	Saturday April 28, 2007

Groups want hydrolysate shipments stopped



By JOHN NORTON
THE PUEBLO CHIEFTAN

Environmental and community groups in Indiana and Texas, as well as the Sierra Club, likely will ask a federal judge on Monday to block further shipments of nerve agent waste from the Army's Newport Chemical Depot.

In a press conference Friday morning, attorney Mick Harrison, representing the group, said that a lawsuit would be filed in federal court in Indianapolis.

Last week, the Army started shipping VX hydrolysate, wastewater from the breakdown of nerve agent at the Newport, Ind., Chemical Depot, to a plant in Port Arthur, Texas, where it will be incinerated.

Groups in Indiana and Texas have accused the Army of violating regulations requiring advance warning of the plan. The Army has been stymied twice already in plans to ship the waste to plants in Ohio and New Jersey where it would have undergone biotreatment.

The issue is an important one to people in Pueblo who are opposed to possible Defense Department plans to ship mustard agent hydrolysate from the Pueblo Chemical Depot, instead of treating it on site as originally planned.

Ross Vincent, of Pueblo, represented the Sierra Club at Friday's conference call. "What they're doing there is bad public policy, it's lousy waste management. It's another sad chapter in a long history of Army mismanagement of the chemical weapons program. If the Army gets away with this behavior in Indiana, they're very likely to try it elsewhere."

On Friday, the Berea, Ky.-based Chemical Weapons Working Group, Sierra Club, Citizens Against Incineration at Newport, Community In-Power Development Association of Port Arthur, Indiana residents Sara Morgan and Leonard Akers, and Texas residents Hilton Kelley and Moya Green filed a notice of intent to sue with the federal government.

The group cited provisions of the federal Solid Waste Disposal Act, the Resource, Conservation and Recovery Act, and the Indiana Environmental Protection Act.

In addition to charges that the public received no notification, Craig Williams of the Berea organization said that sources at the Newport base have reported that there are still dangerous levels of VX in the hydrolysate.