Newport Chemical Depot

Wabash River Ordnance Works

Newport was founded during World War II to produce the military high explosive RDX. The site is 6,990 acres (28.3 km²), located in west central Indiana, near the Wabash River, two miles south of Newport, Indiana, and thirty-two miles north of Terre Haute. It was built during 1942–1943 by the E.I. Dupont de Nemours & Co., the original operating contractor of the site, and was originally known as the Wabash River Ordnance Works." The site was selected for the availability of labor, its proximity to a railroad line, electric power and water, and its isolated location; furthermore, the location had to be more than 200 miles (320 km) away from any costal waters or international borders.

Given the immediate need for RDX, the plant was designed to employ the older Woolwich method for manufacturing the explosive. As a result, the plant manufactured lower amounts of RDX compared to the Holston Ordnance Works, which used the more updated Bachmann process.

The government originally acquired 21,986 acres (88.97 km²) to build the plant. Although most of the land was used for farming, there were 66 clusters of buildings, six cemeteries, and one church. The cemeteries, one apparently dating to 1810, were still maintained as of 1998. Construction started Jan 12, 1942, and production started July 20, 1942.

The plant was mothballed in 1946, but its RDX production was reactivated in 1951 for the Korean War.

Heavy water plant

In 1943–1944, the Newport Army Ammunition Plant added a heavy water plant. During the 1950s, it was used to produce heavy water for the U.S. nuclear weapons program.

Production and stockpiling of Chemical weapons

The Army first built a VX facility at the site in 1959 when it was known as the Newport Chemical Plant. In 1964, the Wabash River Ordnance Works and the Newport Army Chemical Plant were effectively combined and renamed the Newport Army Ammunition Plant.

Beginning in 1961, Newport became a site for chemical weapons manufacturing, producing the entire U.S. stockpile of VX nerve agent at the time. It was also used to store and eventually neutralize 1,269 short tons (1,151 metric tons) of the agent when the U.S. chemical weapons program was shutdown. The stored VX amounted to 4.1% of the U.S. stockpile of chemical weapons in 1997 when the Chemical Weapons Convention came into effect.

Chemical weapons disposal

The U.S. Army Chemical Materials Agency designed the Newport Chemical Agent Disposal Facility (NECDF) for the sole purpose of destroying the VX chemical agent stored at the Newport Chemical Depot. Construction of the NECDF was completed in June 2003. The Army began VX agent destruction operations in May 2005, and completed operations in August 2008. Destruction was performed on behalf of the U.S. Army Chemical Materials Agency by Parsons Infrastructure & Technology, Inc. and more than 500 civilian employees worked at the facility. NECDF’s permit was officially closed in January 2010. The site was the largest employer in Vermillion County between 1941 and it closing, having employed 1,000 workers at its peak.

Process

The Army employed neutralization for the destruction of the VX chemical agent. The agent was neutralized in steel reactors by thoroughly mixing it with heated sodium hydroxide and water. Control room operators directed and monitored the entire process remotely, using a state-of-the-art control system. Once agent neutralization was verified at the on-site laboratory, the caustic wastewater was placed into on-site intermodal storage containers awaiting transport for final treatment to Veolia Environmental Services in Port Arthur, Texas. This process is a different method than incineration which has been the primary manner of chemical agent destruction at other installations.

Delays

The start of operations was delayed several years due to problems in the arrangements of the disposal of the wastewater, which was anticipated to contains trace amounts of VX and 4 byproducts (less than 20 parts per million), problems that had not been completely solved at the start of destruction. Permafix and DuPont did not accept the wastewater for treatment, so it was stored on-site until the Army found another disposal option. Waste was eventually shipped to Port Arthur, Texas where it was processed and incinerated by the company Veolia Environmental Services. A lawsuit delayed the implementation of the shipments, but the suit was ultimately dismissed by a federal judge. The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons certified that the stockpile was 100 percent destroyed in September 2009.

Incidents

A few incidents have occurred during the destruction process, including a 30-gallon spill of VX during processing on June 10, 2005. Further incidents involved spills of the hydrolysate end product. None of these incidents resulted in any injuries.

Base closure

The Army held a Deactivation Ceremony in June 2010, signifying that all activities required for closure of the NECD had been successfully completed. In preparation for closure, the Newport Chemical Depot Reuse Authority (NECDRA) was created to complete a reuse master plan for the NECD. NECDRA and its consultant team worked with the local community to create a plan and implementation strategy for the conversion of the depot to civilian use.