Beginning of the end
RESPONSE: Colonel Barber responds to a question by Sara Morgan, of Citizens Against Incineration, during Wednesday's meeting at South Vermillion high school. (Tribune-Star/Bob Poynter) |
VX destruction date firm "whether we ship or not"
By Patricia L. Pastore/Tribune-Star/Newport
April 1, 2004
The Army plans to neutralize VX at the Newport Chemical Depot in about two months whether or not it hauls the nerve agent's byproduct off-site for treatment, an Army official says.
"You will see this plant start whether we ship or not," said Col. Jesse L. Barber, project manager of the Army's Alternative Technologies and Approach Project, on Wednesday during a public meeting at South Vermillion High School.
Barber was responding to a question about what might occur if the byproduct of VX destruction could not be shipped to an off-site hazardous waste treatment facility
Removing the risk posed by storing VX at Newport is the Army's first priority, Barber said. The United States must meet its commitment to the Chemical Weapons Convention, he said.
Forty-five percent of the U.S. chemical weapons stockpile must be destroyed by 2007, Barber said. The VX at Newport is part of that amount.
"The United States won't get credit for destroying the VX until the caustic hydrolysate is treated," he said.
That remark was prompted by questions fired at Barber by Sara Morgan, a spokeswoman for the Newport Citizens Against Incineration. Morgan asked if he had a contingency plan if his plan to ship off-site failed.
Barber said he has 48 tanks capable of holding 5,000 gallons each to store VX hydrolysate on-site. If additional storage is necessary, he'll order larger tanks and store it on-site until a method to treat and destroy the VX hydrolysate is made, he said.
Concerned citizens want to play a role in how the Army decides to dispose of VX hydrolysate, a caustic, toxic, hazardous waste created during the neutralization of the deadly nerve agent.
Citizens from Parke, Clay, Vermillion, Vigo and Fountain counties listened to presentations made by the Army and DuPont, then they had their say.
"It's been safe here all of these years so they need to leave it here and treat it here," said Norman Hughes of Perrysville, a father of two. "Once it is off-site, you can't guarantee the safety of the byproduct of VX. There is enough dangerous stuff on the highway, we don't need more."
Barber isn't concerned about shipping.
He said statistics show about 800,000 shipments of hazardous waste are made daily across this nation's highways. He said shipping the VX hydrolysate would only add about two more truckloads a day.
Most oppose the Army's plan to neutralize VX and then transport its byproduct more than 800 miles to New Jersey for further treatment and disposal.
Leonard Akers of Fairview told Barber that less than 12 hours after a public meeting in December, Akers learned about DuPont's report on VX hydrolysate treatability and its transportation assessment. He said the Army wasn't open and above board with him and others because citizens weren't told about the report.
Barber said he wasn't aware of the report until the next day.
Wabash Valley citizens and citizens in Delaware and New Jersey have requested the Army through its contractor, Parsons Technology, Inc., abide by the original plan, which called for the VX hydrolysate to be disposed of at the Newport Chemical Depot by super critical water oxidation. This method was approved by Centers for Disease Control scientists in the late 1990s. The Army has already approved super critical water oxidation as final treatment for the destruction byproduct of a Cold War weapon stockpile at Lexington/Blue Grass Depot in Kentucky.
After the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, the Army accelerated its efforts to destroy VX since it poses a homeland security risk.
Super critical water oxidation reactors take about one year to build and the technology is probably two years away from being perfected, Barber said. He said cost of the SCWO reactors had nothing to do with his plan to ship off-site.
Meeting the Chemical Weapons Convention deadline is his job, he said. "We don't need to build technology when it already exists. I believe in letting the commercial industry benefit -- it helps everyone, it is a win-win situation."
The Army is scheduled to neutralize 1,269 tons of VX. Barber hopes to ship the VX hydrolysate off-site where it undergoes treatment at a hazardous waste water plant. He expects to dispose of three to four million gallons of the hazardous waste.
Attempts to haul and treat the VX hydrolysate to a community wastewater treatment facility in Dayton, Ohio failed last fall after community opposition.
Now a New Jersey facility, the largest commercial industrial wastewater treatment plant in North America, is willing and awaiting a contract from the Army to treat the VX byproduct.
DuPont Secure Environmental Treatment facility in Deepwater, N.J., is being considered to treat it.
A DuPont report said tests it conducted shows it can safely treat the VX neutralization waste before dumping the effluent into the Delaware River.
"The treatability studies we performed confirmed we can treat the caustic waste safely and effectively without an impact on the employees, community and environment," said Todd Owens, a DuPont Chemical engineer, on Wednesday.
Another report conducted for the Army by Mitretek Systems, Inc., a Virginia-based, not-for-profit, scientific research and engineering firm, found the main "risk to people, although unlikely, would be from direct contact with the corrosive material (VX hydrolysate)."
Mitretek's 69-page report also said reformation of VX nerve agent "does not occur in neutralized Newport hydrolysate and presents no significant risk for Newport hydrolysate under reasonable scenarios for Transportation Storage Disposal Facility operations of transportation."
John Kearney of the Delaware Clean Air council isn't convinced Mitretek is totally unbiased.
Kearney said Mitretek Systems has done an extensive amount of work for the government. He said that company was hired in 1999 to assess disposal systems for assembled weapons.
"That isn't independent," he said. He said Mitretek has a "credibility issue."
Allen Muller, of Port Penn, Del., also has issues about Mitretek making an independent third-party assessment of reports made by DuPont and Bruce Rittmann of Northwestern University. Rittmann's report on VX hydrolysate for Ohio citizens was instrumental in getting it rejected from their state.
"Mitretek is an offshoot of longtime defense contractor Mitre Corporation," Muller said. "The board of trustees includes two people who have been secretary of the Army, one now associated with Covington & Burling, a heavy-hitter corporate law firm often used by DuPont."
Patricia Pastore can be reached at (812)231-4271 or pat.pastore@tribstar.com