Still searching for the best solution: A long way to go on VX disposal

Processing nerve agent still a big question mark

People in western Indiana heaved a sigh of relief recently when the U.S. Army announced that neutralization of the first batch of nerve agent VX - about 1,500 gallons - had been successful.

Great, we thought. It's the beginning of the end for some 250,000 gallons of the world's most dangerous and toxic man-made material. The oily, amber liquid VX, easily dispersed as a deadly spray, has been stored about 30 miles north of Terre Haute at Newport Chemical Depot since the beginnings of the Cold War.

Soon, Army brass and their civilian contractors were patting themselves on the back for a job still far from done. Last Sunday, the director of the Army's Chemical Weapons Agency - in a Flashpoint essay for the Tribune-Star's opinion page - described the successful destruction so far of about half of our nation's aging chemical weapons at sites in a number of states. He said Indiana and its VX were next.

What Michael Parker, the weapons chief, didn't tell us was that our applause may have been too soon - at least for final disposal of VX at Newport. When "neutralized," the nerve agent forms liquid hydrolysate and still contains minute amounts of VX itself.

The plan has been to truck the treated VX to a DuPont Co. plant in New Jersey for further treatment, then dump it into the Delaware River. But opposition, first from environmentalists, has now widened to federal and New Jersey officials.

A report in April by the Centers for Disease Control focused more critical attention on the plan when it disclosed that even traces of the nerve agent in discharged wastewater could kill fish and damage other aquatic life.

In late May, the U.S. House of Representatives inserted an amendment into a Defense Department bill blocking shipment of the VX byproduct to New Jersey until federal health and environmental agencies agreed that the entire disposal plan is safe.

That prompted New Jersey Gov. Richard J. Codey to order his state's Department of Environmental Protection to issue DuPont a new permit that would prohibit the company, at least for now, from dumping the treated hydrolysate into the Delaware.

The Army says that analysis of the material neutralized at Newport shows less than 20 parts per billion of VX. It hopes to convince environmental protection agencies that the amount of remaining VX is too small to do any damage.

We hope they are right. But no matter how much we'd like to see Indiana wash its hands of VX, we're saving our applause for the day the trucks hit the interstate for New Jersey.

Story created Jun 13, 2005 - 11:25:40 CDT