The Army wants to destroy stockpiles of a highly lethal chemical warfare poison, bring the resulting waste to New Jersey for treatment, and release it in the Delaware River, officials said yesterday.

The plan to get rid of 1,600 tons of the nerve agent VX, now housed at an Army facility in Indiana, has raised protests from environmental groups, who argue that it would be safer to dispose of the poison there.

"They've got a lot of nerve dumping this stuff on New Jersey," said Jeff Tittel, director of the New Jersey Sierra Club. "They're thinking about saving money, they're not thinking about environmental or health costs."

An Army spokesman said it was too expensive to build a treatment plant in Indiana when others that could handle the material already existed. He said the elimination of the VX would start in late spring and start shipping several months later, lasting about six months.

The Army's plan calls for destroying the odorless, tasteless VX, which can kill on contact, by mixing it with a corrosive agent and water. Millions of gallons of the waste material would then be shipped by truck or rail to DuPont's Chambers Works Secure Environmental Treatment Unit in Deepwater, N.J., for treatment.

Military and DuPont officials say the neutralized liquid - called hydrolysate - would be handled as a corrosive waste, such as chlorine. Others in Delaware and New Jersey say they are concerned about transportation issues and safety issues.

"I think there is some controversy about how efficient the process is in destroying the agent," said Thomas Brill, a professor of chemistry at the University of Delaware who has studied toxic agents. "Basically, at what level can you say you've destroyed the material?"

The Army says the VX will be destroyed at its Newport Chemical Depot in Indiana before it leaves the compound.

"It's a waste. It's not VX. Period," said Jeff Lindblad, an Army spokesman at Aberdeen Proving Grounds in Maryland. The poison was made until the late 1960s, and, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, works similarly to a pesticide. It kills by skin contact, eye contact or inhalation and any contact with skin could be lethal.

The Army tried to send the $9 million contract to dispose of the waste to a Dayton, Ohio, plant, but dropped the plan last month. There is no current contract with DuPont, which also treated mustard gas waste from Aberdeen Proving Grounds, but Lindblad said he had heard of no other bidder.

DuPont officials said they are testing a few gallons of the waste - which is about 8 percent to 16 percent hydrolysate - to look for any potential effects. The waste would be treated with carbon absorption and by adding biological ingredients to break down the organic material.

Previously, VX was destroyed by incineration, but the Army was pressured to find another disposal method after Congress ordered the military to reduce its chemical-weapon stockpiles. The government has built a system at Newport to mix VX, an oily, amber liquid, with sodium hydroxide and then hot water.

The transportation route would either be by truck, or by truck and rail, through Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Another possible route would include Maryland and West Virginia.

"The public doesn't like incineration, and so this is another alternative, which brings up new problems," said Robert Beaudet, a professor of chemistry at the University of Southern California who has studied toxic agent disposal. "There's no such thing as a free lunch."