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| By: Marisa Maldonado, Staff Writer | 07/08/2005 |
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EAST WINDSOR — Township Council members expressed frustration Tuesday at a U.S. Army proposal to transport the byproduct of a lethal nerve agent through the township using the New Jersey Turnpike.
"To have two trucks coming down with nerve gas residue," Councilman Alan Rosenberg said at the council's meeting, "it just blows my mind."
The route, one of four proposed by the Army, would take the byproduct, hydrolysate, from the Newport Chemical Depot in Indiana to New Jersey, passing through East Windsor via the Turnpike before arriving in Deepwater, where it would be treated to remove a phosphate compound and dumped into the Delaware River.
Two sealed tankers would transport the liquid every day for between two and three years, said Jeff Lindblad, a spokesman for the U.S. Army's Chemical Materials Agency.
The Army needs to find a facility that would remove phosphorous compounds — a major concern for residents and officials in towns near the dumping site — rather than building a plant to do so at its Newport, Ind., base, Mr. Lindblad said. DuPont Chamber Works was one site talked about by Army officials as a potential processing place.
Mayor Janice Mironov, who learned about the proposal through news reports, said she plans to write letters to state and county representatives, the Army and mayors of neighboring towns who the proposal also will affect, such as Washington and Hamilton.
Mayor Mironov said Tuesday that she had been "unnerved" to find out about the proposal through the newspaper.
"I have thoroughly inadequate information to form any judgments," Mayor Mironov said Wednesday. "This is certainly a major concern of ours."
The Army last month began destroying its stockpile of the VX nerve agent, which in its pure form can be fatal if even a drop enters the bloodstream of a grown man. But the agent's byproduct, hydrolysate, has the consistency of light motor oil and is "safe" to transport on the highway, Mr. Lindblad said Thursday.
Destruction of the nerve gas started on May 5, but the Army halted plans last month when tests showed that the byproduct was flammable at temperatures between 66 and 88 degrees, a lower threshold than previously tested liquid, Mr. Lindblad said. Earlier tests had shown the agent to be flammable at temperatures higher than 200 degrees.
Mayor Mironov said learning of the liquid's high flammability was not a comfort to her. The Army is looking at ways to eliminate the compound, a flammable liquid called diisopropylamine, that engineers have pinpointed as the problem, said Mr. Lindblad.
The Army will not ship any liquid deemed to be dangerous, Mr. Lindblad said.
Township Council members said they did not understand how the Army chose such a route. Councilman Perry Shapiro said the potential routes made even less sense to him after he found Newport, Ind., on a map.
"I don't understand how they found this route, unless they wanted to see beautiful New Jersey," he said.
Councilman Walter Daniels echoed that opinion. He said it might be safer — and cheaper — for the government to dump the nerve agent in Lake Michigan, a closer body of water.
Mr. Lindblad said the government chose the turnpike because it is approved by the state Department of Transportation for transport of hazardous substances.
The Army also considers issues such as whether or not emergency response teams along the route can respond to any problems, and tries to avoid taking hazardous substances through densely populated towns, he said. He also pointed out that substances such as gasoline, which has a flammability point of 50 degrees below zero, travel on major roads every day.
In April 1997, the U.S. Senate ratified an international treaty, the Chemical Weapons Convention, that gave the government 10 years to destroy its existing stockpiles of chemical weapons. Mr. Lindblad said the government will not meet its deadline of April 2007.
The agents at Newport, which were made during the early Cold War era, were given higher priority for destruction after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks because they, along with a facility in Maryland, are the only facilities that store one type of agent.
Mr. Lindblad said the DuPont Chambers Works, the plant in Deepwater that is under consideration to be the processing site, would be responsible for contacting local officials once any route is approved.
Mayor Mironov said contact with officials is just what she hopes to accomplish through sending letters.
"We want to interject ourselves at a very early point and gather as much information as we can," the mayor said.