It's getting pretty damn ridiculous when a good American company like Dupont and the U.S. Army cannot dump a mere 4 million gallons of 'caustic wastewater' from VX NERVE AGENT into the Delaware River!
The DuPont Co. today abandoned its proposal to treat chemical weapon disposal waste at a factory along the Delaware River across from New Castle, saying the company faced a difficult, uphill fight to win approvals for the process.
The Army’s had planned to send up to 4 million gallons of caustic wastewater to DuPont’s Chambers Works plant at Deepwater, N.J., from a VX nerve agent destruction program at Newport, Ind. Operations at Newport already have neutralized about a third of its stockpile of VX — a weaponized liquid chemical capable of killing in droplet-sized amounts.
Several local environmental groups said Thursday they would consider any DuPont pullout a victory.
“The Army now has another opportunity to work cooperatively with contractors and the Newport community to destroy the hydrolysate on-site, per its original plan,” said Elizabeth Crowe. “Too much time and money has been wasted trying to force communities to accept this waste. Its time to get the job done right.”
Crowe’s group and a coalition of citizen and environmental groups sued the Army in federal court last month, saying that the plan to use DuPont’s industrial wastewater treatment plant in Deepwater would violate federal environmental laws, including requirements for environmental impact studies.
“The project would not be able to go ahead at all or would be delayed for a long time while we fought it out in court,” said Tracy Carluccio, a member of the Delaware Riverkeeper Network, one of six other state environmental groups that joined Crowe’s organization in a federal court suit to block the DuPont project.
Damn treehuggers scared of a little VX nerve agent in their drinking water.
