Army contractors to destroy toxin

NEWPORT, Ind. -- In a cavernous, pipe-filled structure known simply as the Utility Building, Army contractors are getting ready to destroy a Cold War-era concoction so lethal it could kill untold millions.\nAfter years of controversy, workers will begin chemically neutralizing 1,269 tons of the ultra-deadly nerve agent VX this summer as part of a plan to eliminate the nation's chemical weapons stockpile.\nResidents near the Newport Chemical Depot are ready to see the VX go. So are activists who keep tabs on the nation's cache of weapons of mass destruction.\n"One drop the size of George Washington's eye on a quarter is enough to kill a healthy, 180-pound male. It's the most lethal chemical on the planet," said Craig Williams, director of the Chemical Weapons Working Group, a Kentucky-based watchdog organization.\nA dispute over what will become of the project's wastewater could leave the rural community about 70 miles west of Indianapolis stuck with the nerve agent's legacy.\nOpposition from Dayton, Ohio, residents scuttled the Army's plan to dispose of up to 4 million gallons of nerve agent wastewater, or hydrolysate, at a plant there. Now, plans to truck the waste to Deepwater, N.J., for treatment and disposal at a DuPont Co. plant are in doubt amid opposition in New Jersey and Delaware.\nThe Army plans to heat the VX in chemical reactors to destroy its structure. Army officials liken the resulting hydrolysate to liquid drain cleaner, and say it will contain no detectable VX at sampling levels of 20 parts per billion.\nAlthough VX was never used by the American military in combat, there have been human exposures in the United States. Its lethal potential was demonstrated in 1968 when an aerial spraying test of VX at Utah's Dugway Proving Grounds went awry, killing about 6,000 grazing sheep.\nThe VX stockpile was produced at the 7,000-acre Newport complex between 1961 and 1968 as a doomsday deterrent. For years after production ended, containers of the nerve agent sat rusting in a field, apparently regarded by the depot's workers as just part of the landscape.\n"They used to eat lunch on top of the containers," said Lt. Col. Joseph Marquart, Newport's commander. "We don't do that anymore."\nThe containers now sit in heavily guarded concrete bunkers built after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.\nSince President Nixon halted the manufacture of chemical weapons in 1969, about 31,000 tons of VX, sarin and mustard nerve agent have been stored at Newport and seven other chemical depots in Alabama, Arkansas, Colorado, Kentucky, Maryland, Oregon and Utah.\nDestruction is under way at four of the eight in compliance with the international Chemical Weapons Convention treaty.\nAt the Newport depot, Army contractors will open the first of 1,690 VX-filled steel containers late this summer inside a building from which no air escapes without being heavily filtered. Security cameras keep watch, and air monitoring equipment scans for trouble.\nInside, workers will drain the 6 1/2-by-3-foot containers in airtight glove box chambers, with technicians outside the reinforced glass using thick gloves to attach a special pumping device.\nThe VX will then be transferred to a steel reactor where it will be neutralized by adding it over a 36-minute period to a mixture of water and sodium hydroxide heated to about 195 degrees. Two sets of paddles will agitate the mixture to complete the reaction.\nWorkers will carry a VX antidote in case of an accidental release.\nNeutralizing all the VX should take about 2 1/2 years. But where it will go from is unclear.\nDuPont wants to dump treated hydrolysate into the Delaware River. But fears that the chemical could ruin decades of river cleanup led Delaware Gov. Ruth Ann Minner and New Jersey Gov. James McGreevey to send the Army a letter of protest.\n"There's too many questions," said Gregory Patterson, Minner's spokesman.\nDuPont spokesman Anthony Farina said the company will not accept an Army contract to handle the hydrolysate until the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Environmental Protection Agency complete studies of DuPont's plans.\nBecause of the uncertainties, the Army intends to buy 50 5,000-gallon tanks that will allow it to store at Newport about 240,000 gallons of hydrolysate.\nSara Morgan, a teacher who lives a few miles from the depot, is glad the neutralization will soon begin. She led a campaign that forced the Army to drop its original plans to incinerate Newport's VX, a method some feared could release toxins into the air.\nYet she believes the project's waste should stay at Newport-- not sent off to become New Jersey and Delaware's problem.\n"The citizens of the area where this is going to be treated should be accepting of it," she said. "I don't think it should be shoved down their throats"