WASHINGTON -- It would make good economic sense to neutralize a lethal nerve agent at a military facility in Indiana, ship the remaining solvent to Salem County and dispose of the caustic fluid in the Delaware River, the U.S. Army has found.
The Army's study of its own VX nerve agent disposal plan, posted on the Web site for the Chemical Materials Agency on Tuesday, provoked a furious reaction from U.S. Rep. Robert Andrews, an eight-term Democrat from South Jersey.
Andrews dismissed the Army's findings as "flimsy." He said he would ask the General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress, to reassess the Army's plan to neutralize the byproduct, truck it to South Jersey and discharge the remaining hydrolysate into the river via the DuPont Chambers Works in Salem County.
The report "is a remarkable monument to stubbornness," said Andrews, D-1st Dist. "If it were handed in by a student, it would receive an 'F."'
The Army provides no evidence for its conclusions, but merely re-asserts the assumptions that have served as its rationale for its VX disposal plan since the project became controversial in New Jersey, Andrews claims.
The Army takes a different view. In a press statement, the Army says that it has studied eight alternatives to the South Jersey disposal plan, as required by Congress.
The South Jersey option will save as much as $347 million and may speed up the VX nerve agent disposal plan by up to 57 months, the Army found.
"This demonstrates that our proposal for off-site treatment (in New Jersey) provides significant and substantial benefit to the taxpayer," said Col. Jesse L. Barber, the U.S. Army Chemical Material Agency's project manager.
Andrews and other New Jersey officials had hoped the Army would find that it could neutralize the VX nerve agent -- as required by a chemical weapons treaty ratified by the U.S. Senate -- and store the remaining hydrolysate at the Newport Chemical Depot in Newport, Ind., where the VX nerve agent is now maintained.
The Army's VX disposal project has not yet received a green light from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which is reviewing the possible impacts of a hydrolysate discharge on human health.