An Army plan to neutralize a deadly nerve agent and discard the wastewater in the Delaware River might give developers something else to test for in dredged material dropped into Hazleton mines. The Army wants to treat a quarter-million gallons of VX nerve agent and proposed releasing the waste liquid into the Delaware, one possible source of mine fill for the Hazleton amphitheater grounds.
So far, the Army's plan is on hold. The waste liquid can catch fire, causing transportation challenges. Scientists raised the possibility that treated wastewater could recombine into VX, a drop of which is lethal to humans.
Elected officials in New Jersey, where the release would occur at a Dupont Chambers facility at Carney's Point, spoke against dumping in the Delaware.
"It's really a moot point on the VX," Tom Rathbun of the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection said. He said Dupont lacks permission to release treated nerve agents.
An Army spokesman, however, said the fire risk has been reduced and VX won't re-form in the river, and that disposal in the Delaware remains the leading option.
"The proposal is still our plan. Nothing is finalized. There is no contract with Dupont,'' Jeff Lindblad of the U.S. Army Chemical Materials Agency at the Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland said.
Dupont and the Army await a study by the Centers for Disease Control. The CDC will examine health effects of treating VX at the storage site in Newport, Ind. and transporting the treated liquid to Dupont for further treatment and disposal in the Delaware.
In April, an initial report by the CDC said Dupont should be able to treat most of the waste liquid but that the process should be proven before being used on batches containing a particular stabilizer or higher concentrations of VX. Not enough information was available, the report said, to evaluate the environmental risk to the Delaware.
It is unclear whether developers in Hazleton who want to build an amphitheater after filling mines on 277 acres would have to test dredged material for VX or residuals from treating the nerve agent.
The state's general permit for using dredge, fly ash and kiln dust as mine fill doesn't list thresholds for VX, hydrolysate or other residuals.
An environmental engineer who studied a plan two years ago to treat VX at Dayton, Ohio thinks dredged sediment should be evaluated for the nerve agent and its residuals if the Army dumps into the Delaware.
"I think it's something to put on the table. You have to look at the amounts discharged and evaluate the risk,'' Dr. Bruce Rittmann, director of the Center for Environmental Biology at Arizona State University, said.
Rittmann doesn't think VX components would accumulate in dredged material as heavily as substances such as polychlorinated biphenyls, but he doesn't discount the risk.
When treated at pH as high as 13 or 14, VX breaks down, but the parts could become VX again if the pH declines, he said.
"The experts in the business think that is a reasonable possibility,'' Rittmann said.
After treatment, the wastewater's high pH makes it caustic, which the CDC said is the predominant health hazard from the liquid. It smells like a skunk and contains flammable substances, although Rittmann heard that the treatment has been changed to reduce the fire risk since his study.
Lindblad, the Army's spokesman, said wastewater won't recombine into VX. Refinements in treatment increased the flash point of wastewater to 140 degrees or higher from 100 degrees, he said.