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Deadly Nerve Agent To Be Destroyed
NEWPORT, IN (AP) - Residents who live near a western Indiana depot storing deadly
chemicals say they rarely think about the dangers except during routine safety
drills or occasional false alarms.
But as the Army gets ready to destroy more than 250,000 gallons of VX nerve
agent stored in Newport Chemical Depot, some residents say they will be glad
to see
it go.
“It’s one of those things that’s sort of been a part of life
around here as long as people can remember,” said Dennis Overberg, principal
at Montezuma Elementary School, about eight miles south of the 7,000-acre depot. “It
will be a very nice thing to not have to worry about it anymore.”
Last month a false alarm from a system that alerts residents in three western
Indiana counties to problems at the depot sent schools, including Montezuma,
scrambling to start taping their doors and windows to keep out potentially
harmful fumes before the all-clear was sounded.
Overberg still does spend time worrying about it, saying he knows it is almost
impossible for anyone to steal or disperse the chemical that has been stored
at the facility about 30 miles north of Terre Haute since the 1960s.
And because VX - a liquid agent that can kill a healthy adult male with a
single pinpoint droplet - has the consistency of mineral oil and evaporates
and moves
slowly, Army officials say a spill would never move off site.
Even so, the Army is being careful as it prepares to open 1,600 1-ton carbonized
steel containers and destroy the VX sometime in the spring, The Indianapolis
Star reported.
Almost every home, school and business within ten miles of the depot has
an emergency radio, and 27 sirens throughout the county could be activated.
Residents
know
how to seal a room in case the VX is vaporized and evacuation routes have
been established.
And every worker inside the depot’s 40-acre disposal area carries a
syringe of VX antidote to inject immediately in case of exposure.
The danger and significance of the agent’s destruction cannot be overstated,
activists say.
“It is an enormous relief for almost everyone to see this deadly weapon
of mass destruction get destroyed,” said Paul Walker, director of the Legacy
Program for Global Green USA, an international environmental watchdog group. “It
will no longer be a threat to the region, the community, the state and, literally,
the whole world.”
The VX neutralization is expected to create four million gallons of a chemical
byproduct called hydrolysate that requires additional treatment before disposal.
Army officials want to transport the hydrolysate - which has been compared
to liquid drain cleaner - to a DuPont plant in New Jersey for treatment and
disposal
in the Delaware River. The plan has sparked opposition in New Jersey and Delaware.
The only VX-manufacturing plant in the country was built in 1962 amid escalating
Cold War tensions, and operated until 1969, when President Richard Nixon issued
a moratorium on chemical weapons.
To residents, the depot was a place to get a good job during tough times.
“It was the biggest employer around,” said Wayne West, 80, of Newport,
a town with fewer than 600 people and no stoplights. “We didn’t
think there was any real danger.”
He worked at the depot for 20 years and recalls how the VX was loaded onto
rail cars, along with rabbits to serve as an early warning of a VX leak,
much like
a canary in a mine, guarded by soldiers.
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