A ceremony commemorating elimination of the chemical stockpile that was stored at Newport Chemical Depot was held Oct. 25 at South Vermillion High School in Clinton, Ind. The ceremony was hosted by the U.S. Army Chemical Materials Agency (CMA); Newport Chemical Depot (NECD), where workers monitored and guarded the stockpile; and the Newport Chemical Agent Disposal Facility (NECDF), where the employees neutralized the VX.

Workers at NECDF began destroying the stockpile on May 5, 2005, and the last batch was neutralized on August 8, 2008. Indiana is now the third site in the United States to completely eliminate its stockpile of chemical agent, following Johnston Atoll, a U.S. territory southwest of Hawaii, and Aberdeen Chemical Agent Disposal Facility in Maryland.

Click here for the entire CMA News – November 2008

Court Rules in Army’s Favor in the Newport Hydrolysate Shipments Case

ABERDEEN PROVING GROUND, Md.- A U.S. District Court Judge ruled Monday in favor of the Army and dismissed on all counts a case seeking to halt shipments of caustic waste water created by the destruction of the nerve agent VX at an Army plant in Indiana to a treatment facility in Texas.

The ruling issued by Chief Judge Larry J. McKinney of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Indiana in Indianapolis, was in favor of the Army and granted the Army’s motion for summary judgment. This ruling confirmed the Army’s position that the litigation, initiated by a collection of plaintiffs on May 8, 2007, raised no genuine issues to be tried. This followed an earlier court decision that denied a motion for a preliminary injunction to halt ongoing shipments of the waste water in an August 3, 2007 ruling.

The U.S. Army Non-Stockpile Chemical Materiel Project (NSCMP) recently completed support operations at Schofield Barracks, Hawaii, facilitating the destruction of recovered chemical warfare materiel (RCWM). NSCMP was tasked by the office of the Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Army for Environment, Safety and Occupational Health, DASA (ESOH), to provide operational planning and testing of the Transportable Detonation Chamber (TDC) TC-60. The TDC explosively treats RCWM on site in a blast containment vessel; while capturing any vapor with redundant air filtration systems. Operators treated the last of the 71 recovered items on July 30, with an outstanding safety and environmental record. NSCMP worked with Schofield Barracks to extensively coordinate the destruction effort with local, state and federal agencies, including the Centers for Disease Control, Environmental Protection Agency, Department of Health and Human Services, Hawaii State Department of Health, and the City and County of Honolulu. This deliberative and collaborative effort ensured safeguards were in place to protect the health of the community and the environment.

Sampling Project Successfully Completed Ahead of Schedule

Workers at the U.S. Army’s Deseret Chemical Depot (DCD) in Utah’s Tooele County today completed a major secondary project, removingchemical agent samples for analysis and measuring solid materials from each of DCD’s original stockpile of nearly 6,400 mustard agent-filled bulk containers.

Under the joint project, Army civilians working inside DCD’s munitions storage area delivered bulk containers to special sampling facilities where contract workers for EG&G Defense Materials, Inc. removed samples for analysis and characterization by site laboratory personnel. Originally scheduled to take three-and-a-half years to complete, workers completed the project 14 months earlier than scheduled.