BEREA, Kentucky, October 23, 2007 (ENS) - Citizen groups trying to stop the U.S. Army from shipping waste from deadly VX nerve agent from Indiana across eight states to Port Arthur, Texas say sources who wish to remain anonymous told the groups that the Army had withheld crucial information from the public and a federal judge during a hearing on the shipments last July.

Based on this information, the groups have taken legal action again to challenge the process, which they claim is illegal and poses serious safety and health hazards.

In the motion for summary judgment filed today, groups state that the Army "intentionally withheld critical evidence" from the public and the federal judge in Indiana who heard their arguments last July.

The Army ships the VX nerve agent hydrolysate from Newport, Indiana to Port Arthur, Texas to be incinerated as part of the destruction of all U.S. chemical weapons under an international treaty.

On April 5, 2007, the Army signed a $49 million contract with Veolia Environmental Services of Lombard, Illinois to provide final treatment of the caustic wastewater at its plant in Port Arthur, Texas.

After U.S. District Judge Larry McKinney denied the groups' request for a preliminary injunction to stop the VX hydrolysate, VXH, shipments, the groups were given an "inside tip" that extensive efforts had been made to identify viable on-site alternatives to the transportation option and that the Army had kept secret the data resulting from those efforts.

"Withholding information about these activities undermines the very cornerstone of the National Environmental Policy Act, a federal law requiring open review of alternatives for actions undertaken by the federal government that could have environmental consequences," said Craig Williams, director of the Chemical Weapons Working Group based in Berea.

According to today's filing, not only were three alternatives identified as viable, one was actually chosen as the contingency plan should VXH shipment to a DuPont facility in New Jersey be unsuccessful, which it turned out to be.

Opposition due to public health and environmental impact concerns blocked the DuPont proposal. The groups' motion states, "After the DuPont option failed, the federal defendants abandoned, in secret, the on-site VXH treatment contingency option that had been selected in secret and for which preparations had been made in secret (and paid for by the federal defendants)."

The motion claims that the undisclosed steps taken by the Army to implement a viable on-site treatment option went so far as to even include preparing environmental permit applications and drafting a NEPA analysis - yet none of this information was made public nor provided to the court.

"It's obvious to us that the Army and their contractors did not want the public or the court to be aware of how far their on-site treatment selection had progressed in order to make their clandestine signing of a contract with an incinerator company almost a thousand miles away appear to be the only workable option," said Williams.

The motion also claims that there was no public notice, review or comment on the decision to ship the waste to Texas.

The groups also claim that the shipments violate U.S. law prohibiting interstate transportation of chemical weapons.

They allege that there are higher VX concentrations in the waste than expected due to valve failures, piping configurations and holding tank design flaws at the Newport, Indiana treatment facility.

The Army failed to consider matters of environmental justice in its decision, the groups claim, saying that the Army failed to provide adequate monitoring or response capability for VX agent releases.

Mick Harrison, attorney for plaintiffs, said, "The new evidence presented in this motion shows, disturbingly, that the Army made a conscious choice to disregard the clear Congressional mandate that the public be meaningfully involved in the analysis federal agencies are required to conduct under NEPA of alternative courses of action and their environmental consequences. The Army, however, is not above the law."

Although some of these points were raised during the preliminary injunction hearing in July in which the judge ruled in favor of the Army, the plaintiffs believe that the new information including on-site treatment capabilities, along with additional arguments on the merits of the claims, will result in a favorable finding during this procedure.

Meanwhile, plaintiffs have been insisting the EPA review the methods used by the Army to determine the toxicity of the VXH waste being sent to Port Arthur for incineration, claiming that the current methods are not in compliance with EPA requirements.

If the EPA does not do an investigation thorough enough to satisfy them, plaintiffs in this case say they will consider bringing suit to force that issue as well.

Copyright Environment News Service (ENS) 2007. All rights reserved.