Texas Site Begins CW Waste Destruction

A Texas facility has begun to incinerate wastewater produced from neutralized U.S. chemical weapons in Indiana, the Port Arthur News reported Tuesday (see GSN, April 18).

Veolia Environmental Services has so far received 16,000 gallons of the waste, according to the News.  The Port Arthur plant is one of only three facilities in the United States with the necessary equipment.

The site is capable of destroying all the anticipated wastewater to be received from the Newport Chemical Depot within two years, said Mitch Osborne, general manager of Veolia’s Gulf Coast branch.  The schedule of shipments, however, remains uncertain and the company’s contract runs through 2012, he said.

A video of the arrival of some tanker trucks showed workers wearing hazardous material protective suits.

“We’ve handled a lot more hazardous material than this but we wear protective equipment with any hazardous material,” Osborne said.

International inspectors have installed monitoring and verification equipment at the facility and on the tanker trucks to ensure that material shipped from Newport is not diverted along the way and is destroyed when it arrives, the News reported.

The measures include surveillance cameras at the incinerator and valve seals on the trucks (Amy Moore, Port Arthur News, April 17).

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