The U.S. Army can finish shipping chemical waste from the destruction of a deadly nerve agent in Indiana to an incinerator in Texas, a judge has ruled.
Most of the waste has already been sent to Texas. The last shipment left western Indiana on Sept. 4. The waste was the neutralized remains from VX nerve agent that was destroyed under an international treaty requiring the United States to destroy its chemical weapons stockpile.
U.S. District Judge Larry McKinney on Monday granted the Army's request for summary judgment in the lawsuit filed by the environmental group Sierra Club and other organizations.
The lawsuit contended the shipments were illegal and that the Army had not fully assessed the risk of shipping 1,513,994 gallons of waste some 900 miles from the Newport Chemical Depot to Port Arthur, Texas.
The groups also argued that the waste, called hydrolysate, was more dangerous than the Army maintained. VX, from which the waste came, is a Cold War-era chemical weapon so deadly that just a tiny droplet can kill a human.
McKinney ruled that the waste, though hazardous, was not a munition or chemical agent.
He found in favor of the Army on all the issues raised in the lawsuit, including the Army's contention that it fully considered the risks of the shipments.
Col. Robert B. Billington, the program manager for Chemical Stockpile Elimination at the Chemical Materials Agency, said in a statement that the ruling "validates what we have said all along, that this was our best disposal option."
Brubaker said a small amount of the waste remains in the two storage tanks at the Newport site, where the VX was destroyed in specially built chemical reactors. He said that waste will be removed and sent to Texas as the disposal facility is dismantled over the next two years.
Craig Williams of the Chemical Weapons Working Group, one of the groups in the suit, said the groups do not plan further action since the waste has been shipped.
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