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U.S. Army Considers Handing Over Newport Chemical Depot to Home County in Indiana
The U.S. Army is considering turning over the Newport Chemical Depot in Indiana to its home Vermillion County once the facility is closed, the Indianapolis Star reported yesterday (see GSN, Dec. 1). To facilitate the handover, the Army is testing the area to determine if any hazardous materials still exist at the site, besides the stocks of VX nerve agent that are being stored and eliminated. The Army does not anticipate finding any nerve agent but is being cautious because of Newport’s long history of weapons production, said Cathy Collins, chief engineer at the facility. “We're being as cautious as we can be. We don't want to leave any stone unturned,” she said. The handover of the site would not occur for several years, the Star reported. The Army has identified at least four burial sites at the depot. Buried at one location are decontaminated protective gear and scrap metal related to production of the nerve agent. During VX production in the 1960s, nerve agent was drained from dud weapons, neutralized and then placed in a well one mile underground, said Tom Burch, a former civilian employee at Newport. Citizen watchdog groups praised the Army’s investigation. “Now is the time to take a look and see what else could be there,” said Elizabeth Crowe of the Chemical Weapons Working Group. “I don't think anyone in the community wants to find anything by accident when (the site) is being developed.” A report by the Army in 1996 found that Newport and two other sites in Indiana — Camp Atterbury and the Crane Division of the Naval Surface Warfare Center — might contain buried chemical weapons-related waste. There are no plans to convert the other two sites to nonfederal ownership. However, it is imperative to find any buried toxic waste at Newport, said Indiana Environmental Management Department official Tom Linson, “because we know the base is destined for closure. We know (the site) will become potential public property, and we can't say there haven't been surprises at Newport. As thorough a job as has been done, we've still found a few things that had been initially overlooked.” Linson noted that Newport was also used for production of heavy water for early nuclear weapons, along with TNT and the plastic explosive RDX. “Hopefully, the number of surprises in the future will be small, but we can't rule it out, so we proceed with caution,” he added (Tammy Webber, Indianapolis Star, Dec. 5).
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