Newport Waste Heading to Texas

[PVnRT]

Citizens in Vermillion County voiced opposition Monday night to Army plans to ship to Texas the wastewater material created when VX nerve agent is neutralized.

“I feel like we’ve been deceived,” said Leonard Akers, a Clinton resident and member of the Chemical Weapons Working Group, an organization made up of people living near chemical weapons facilities and opposed to incinerating the deadly agents. “It was born here – it ought to die here,” Akers said, before a microphone.

Akers and other local residents used a Monday night public meeting in South Vermillion High School to express concern about the Army’s plans. The Army hosted the meeting to update citizens on the latest in the destruction of VX.

“Why did they in secret?” asked Mary Jo Crane, a resident of rural Vermillion County. “This is disgusting to me,” she said, after the meeting.

The first shipment of neutralized VX wastewater, called hydrolysate, left Newport Chemical Depot before dawn Monday on a 20-hour journey to Port Arthur, Texas where it will be incinerated, Newport Chemical Depot officials said.

It would be nice to say that this was just bad communication from the Army to the public, but that would be a lie. Until this was made official, outside of possibly the people working on the government side, no one here knew anything other than a rumor that a place in Texas was bidding to take in the waste. This was done in nearly complete secrecy without input from anyone working here or the public, and I have to say I'm pretty pissed about it myself.

Yes, it is safe to transport (the caustic we get shipped here to run anything is more dangerous), and, yes, it is exponentially more expensive to treat it here. But it sure as hell seems like there is shady business going on.

I would like to point out that this statement:

“It’s getting dangerous again,” said Akers. He has heard rumors from employees at the Newport facility that VX is starting to reform in the storage containers at levels above what the law permits for transportation, he said.

is pure fucking stupidity. It is not "reforming." If it did, the UN inspectors here would have raised hell by now.

[LiberalFighter]

1. Then they should call Bayh and Lugar about this