Published: September 29, 2008 07:55 am      

Army prevails

Nerve agent waste shipment continues

A legal dispute brought on by several national grassroots organizations, including the Berea-based Chemical Weapons Working Group (CWWG), was defeated last Monday in U.S. District Court allowing the Army to continue shipping caustic waste water created by the destruction of VX nerve agent.

The ruling issued by Chief U.S. District Judge Larry J. McKinney for the Southern District of Indiana in Indianapolis, was in favor of the Army and granted the Army’s motion for summary judgment.

The waste is being sent from an Indiana Army plant to a disposal facility in Texas.

The CWWG was just one of the many plaintiffs, which included similar organizations from New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Delaware.

The plaintiffs collectively filed suit in December 2006.

Their complaint was that the Army’s plans to transport the byproduct of neutralized VX nerve agent (also stored at the Blue Grass Army Depot in Richmond) from Indiana violates a federal law banning interstate movement of chemical weapons.

The Army does not consider caustic waste created from chemical weapon destruction to still be classified as a chemical weapon, therefore no federal laws are broken.

The court ruled Monday that the caustic waste water, known as hydrolysate, is a hazardous waste, not a munition or chemical agent, and that the Army adequately considered the other risks inherent in the transportation of the waste to Texas for ultimate disposal.

However, some watchdog organizations have not been convinced that the waste contains absolutely no nerve agent.

If the waste still contains traces of the lethal VX nerve agent, it should be destroyed on-site, said Craig Williams, director of Berea’s CWWG.

“You shouldn’t be sending this stuff across state lines in the first place,” Williams said. “Instead of treating the byproduct on-site, which was the original decision given to the community, they changed their mind and decided to send it off-site to a hazardous waste incineration facility in an area that is heavily populated by minorities.”

The co-plaintiffs in the lawsuit include the Delaware Riverkeeper Network, the American Littoral Society, Pennsylvania Clean Water Action, the Delaware and New Jersey Audubon societies and the New Jersey Environmental Foundation.

“We as a coalition of under-funded citizens groups tried to do what we felt was in the best interest of protecting the American public,” Williams said. “We did what we thought was right. If we had the resources and the playing field was level from a resource standpoint, I think we could have prevailed.”Conrad F. Whyne, director of the U.S. Army Chemical Materials Agency, said the court’s decision confirmed that the Army indeed was and will remain concerned about public risk.

“This ruling and summary judgment should demonstrate that the Army and its many partners in this program — Parsons, Veolia Environmental Services and Tri-State Motor Transit — conduct the program with every attention paid to safeguarding our workers, our communities and our environment,” Whyne said.

Changing the plan from destroying the waste on-site to transporting it off base was something done behind the community’s back, Williams said.

“That is no way for our government to operate when it comes to community involvement and the principles of democracy,” he said. “It’s another example of Goliath beating David, but we all know what happened in the end.”

Ronica Shannon can be reached at rshannon@richmondregister.com or 623-1669, Ext. 234.