North Jersey.com April 07, 2005
CDC warns on VX waste dumping
A plan to destroy the Army's stockpile of the world's deadliest chemical weapon and ship the resulting waste to New Jersey should not proceed, a government report said Wednesday.
The plan to destroy 1,269 tons of VX nerve agent - so lethal a single drop can kill a man - "has raised concerns and questions about potential impacts on public health and the environment," the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said. The waste from neutralizing the agent would be treated and dumped into the Delaware River, under the plan.
Trace amounts of VX may remain even after it undergoes a chemical process meant to destroy it, the CDC report said. Those amounts would not be harmful to humans, but "may not be protective of aquatic organisms," according to the 86-page report.
At least one lawmaker, Rep. Robert Andrews, D-Camden, called on the Army to abandon the project altogether.
But officials from the Army and DuPont, the company responsible for treating the wastewater at its Deepwater plant, near the Delaware Memorial Bridge, said they were confident the plan would go ahead soon.
"We are confident any concerns addressed in the CDC study can be resolved," said Terry Arthur, a spokeswoman for the Newport Chemical Depot in Indiana, where the VX has been stored. "We would not ship [the neutralized VX] to New Jersey or anywhere else without knowing it was safe - and DuPont won't accept it unless it's safe."
The Army is required by treaty to destroy the nerve agent this decade. The VX has been stored at the Newport depot, 70 miles west of Indianapolis, since it was manufactured in the 1960s. Production was stopped in 1969. It has never been used.
The U.S. Army Chemical Materials Agency released a statement Wednesday saying it was reviewing the report.
Another concern raised in the report was the presence of phosphorus in the wastewater that would be released into the Delaware River. Phosphorus acts as a nutrient, promoting the growth of aquatic plants such as algae, which rob oxygen from the water and kill fish.
DuPont officials, however, say the Delaware-based company has developed a method for removing the phosphorus from the water, a detail the CDC didn't take into account in its report. DuPont scientists will meet with government officials this month to demonstrate the new technology.
Nick Fanandakis, vice president and general manager of DuPont Chemical Solutions Enterprise, said in a statement that the company will not move forward with the Army's plan "until the technical recommendations from the report are reviewed and addressed."
The process of destroying VX consists of adding the agent - it has the consistency of motor oil - to a solution of water and heated sodium hydroxide, a highly caustic liquid. The resulting reaction neutralizes the VX and creates a corrosive byproduct called hydrolysate. Four million gallons of hydrolysate are expected to be created over the course of neutralizing the entire stockpile.
Because different chemicals are used to stabilize the nerve agent in storage, the processes used by the Army to destroy the VX will work on only half the stockpile, the report warns. Army chemists need to "use various recipes to come up with an approach" to neutralize the rest, a CDC official said.
Pentagon officials sent a letter to Congress on Tuesday saying the Army was ready to begin destroying half the stockpile. That step would meet a requirement that Congress be provided with at least 30 days' notice before the destruction begins, said Arthur, the Newport spokeswoman.
Arthur said it has not been decided exactly when the chemical neutralization would begin, but it could start anytime after May 5.
The neutralized VX could be stored at the Newport facility until DuPont is ready to take delivery in New Jersey.
In the next step, the neutralized VX would be loaded into hazardous materials tanker trucks for the 760-mile trip to New Jersey. The report approved the transportation plan, saying that precautions were "adequate to protect the public, personnel and environment."
This article contains material from The Associated Press. |E-mail: ivry@northjersey.com
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Deadly stockpile
VX, a liquid the consistency of motor oil, is the deadliest nerve agent ever made. Just 10 mg can kill - making it 170 times deadlier than sarin.
VX was added to land mines, spray tanks and rockets and shipped to military sites worldwide. It has never been used in battle, but an accidental release in Utah killed 6,000 sheep in 1968.
The U.S. manufactured VX from 1961 to 1968 at the Newport Chemical Depot in Indiana. The government has destroyed all but 1,269 tons of its stockpile, which is stored in 200-gallon carbon steel cylinders at the depot, 70 miles west of Indianapolis.
Under the terms of the Chemical Weapons Convention treaty ratified in April 1997, the United States must destroy its entire inventory of chemical weapons and production facilities by 2007.
Sources: John Pike, Global Security.org; Terry Arthur, Newport Chemical Depot; Associated Press.
© Copyright 2005,North Jersey Media Group Inc.
