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July 18, 2007

Army admits VX is not ‘destroyed’ in caustic wastewater

By Ashley Sanders

The News staff writer

Hilton Kelley is optimistic about the outcome of a preliminary injunction to stop shipments of a former nerve gas from being trekked from Indiana to Port Arthur.

“The judge probably won’t make a ruling until Thursday or Friday,” Kelley, director of Community In-Power and Development (CIDA), said via telephone interview Wednesday. “Yesterday, a colonel testified that the hydrolysate is not as safe as the Army reported.”

“I am feeling happy on one end that we were right about this VX wastewater. But, I feel bad for the citizens of Port Arthur for being subjected to this waste,” Kelley added.

Two senior Army officials admitted in federal court in Indianapolis, Ind. on Tuesday that the VX nerve agent byproducts being shipped from the Newport Army Depot in Indiana to Port Arthur’s Veolia incinerator are not considered “destroyed” under the definition of the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC).

The CWC is an international treaty, to which the U.S. is obligated to abide.

“Until this material is destroyed under the treaty definition, it is considered a declared chemical weapon,” said Craig Williams, director of the Chemical Weapons Working Group (CWWG).

The CWWG, Sierra Club, CIDA and local groups in Newport filed suit against the Army and Veolia Environmental Services for reportedly putting communities at risk from the transportation and incineration of the VX liquid byproduct, called hydrolysate.

In Tuesday's court testimony, one Army witness and two Army contractors admitted that during chemical neutralization operations at Newport, solids from the hydrolysate found in the neutralization reactor showed concentrations of VX at 19 parts per million. The Army considers hydrolysate safe for transportation if levels of VX agent are 20 parts per billion or less - a level one thousand times lower than what was found in the solids.

Neil Carman, air quality researcher and former regulatory official with the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, explained to the court Tuesday that the Port Arthur community fits the profile of environmental injustice due to high poverty rates and large minority population.

Kelley agrees.

“Our city officials do not do enough to protect citizens,” Kelley said. “They should not give industry the right to burn toxins in our community. Everything that goes up must come down.”

The first shipment of hydrolysate arrived at Veolia on April 16 as part of a $49 million contract with the U.S. Army to destroy the VX wastewater at its Port Arthur facility — one of only three facilities in the nation with the necessary equipment to do so.

Veolia representatives maintain that the wastewater is safe and causes no harm to the public during incineration.





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