The Newport Chemical Depot, previously known as the Wabash River Ordnance Works and the
Newport Army Ammunition Plant, was a bulk
chemical
A chemical substance is a form of matter having constant chemical composition and characteristic properties. Some references add that chemical substance cannot be separated into its constituent elements by physical separation methods, i.e., w ...
storage and destruction facility that was operated by the
United States Army
The United States Army (USA) is the land warfare, land military branch, service branch of the United States Armed Forces. It is one of the eight Uniformed services of the United States, U.S. uniformed services, and is designated as the Army o ...
. It is located near
Newport, in west central
Indiana
Indiana () is a U.S. state in the Midwestern United States. It is the 38th-largest by area and the 17th-most populous of the 50 States. Its capital and largest city is Indianapolis. Indiana was admitted to the United States as the 19th s ...
, thirty-two miles north of
Terre Haute
Terre Haute ( ) is a city in and the county seat of Vigo County, Indiana, United States, about 5 miles east of the state's western border with Illinois. As of the 2010 census, the city had a population of 60,785 and its metropolitan area had a ...
. The site was used as a production site for the solid explosives
trinitrotoluene
Trinitrotoluene (), more commonly known as TNT, more specifically 2,4,6-trinitrotoluene, and by its preferred IUPAC name 2-methyl-1,3,5-trinitrobenzene, is a chemical compound with the formula C6H2(NO2)3CH3. TNT is occasionally used as a reage ...
and
RDX
RDX (abbreviation of "Research Department eXplosive") or hexogen, among other names, is an organic compound with the formula (O2N2CH2)3. It is a white solid without smell or taste, widely used as an explosive. Chemically, it is classified as a ...
, as well as for
heavy water. It also served as the production site for all of the U.S. military's nerve agent
VX, when it was in use. All VX nerve agent at the site was neutralized by August 8, 2008. It was the third of the Army's nine chemical depots to completely destroy its stockpile.
History
Wabash River Ordnance Works
Newport was founded during
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...
to produce the military high explosive
RDX
RDX (abbreviation of "Research Department eXplosive") or hexogen, among other names, is an organic compound with the formula (O2N2CH2)3. It is a white solid without smell or taste, widely used as an explosive. Chemically, it is classified as a ...
.
The site is , located in west central
Indiana
Indiana () is a U.S. state in the Midwestern United States. It is the 38th-largest by area and the 17th-most populous of the 50 States. Its capital and largest city is Indianapolis. Indiana was admitted to the United States as the 19th s ...
, near the Wabash River, two miles south of Newport, Indiana, and thirty-two miles north of
Terre Haute
Terre Haute ( ) is a city in and the county seat of Vigo County, Indiana, United States, about 5 miles east of the state's western border with Illinois. As of the 2010 census, the city had a population of 60,785 and its metropolitan area had a ...
.
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 away from any coastal 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 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 January 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 as an element of the Manhattan Project
The Manhattan Project was a research and development undertaking during World War II that produced the first nuclear weapons. It was led by the United States with the support of the United Kingdom and Canada. From 1942 to 1946, the project w ...
's P-9 Project for construction of nuclear weapons. 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 of the agent when the U.S. chemical weapons program was shut down. 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 its 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
In science and engineering, the parts-per notation is a set of pseudo-units to describe small values of miscellaneous dimensionless quantities, e.g. mole fraction or mass fraction. Since these fractions are quantity-per-quantity measures, th ...
), 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
Veolia Environmental Services (in French Veolia Propreté), formerly Onyx Environnement, is a division of Veolia Environnement. It employs nearly 78,000 staff, has operations in 35 countries around the world, and generated revenues of nearly € ...
. 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
The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) is an intergovernmental organisation and the implementing body for the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), which entered into force on 29 April 1997. The OPCW, with its 193 member ...
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 and redevelopment
A 2005 BRAC commission report recommended the depot's closure and 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. NECD's closure led to the loss of over 675 jobs and rural Vermillion County's largest employer.[
NeCDRA sought a civilian reuse plan that would replace lost jobs, maintain ]environmental quality
"Environmental Quality" is a set of properties and characteristics of the environment, either generalized or local, as they impinge on human beings and other organisms. It is a measure of the condition of an environment relative to the requirements ...
, and be economically viable and obtained partnerships with Duke Energy and Garmong Construction. The depot has since been transformed into Vermillion Rise Mega Park, a 7,100-acre office and industrial park
An industrial park (also known as industrial estate, trading estate) is an area zoned and planned for the purpose of industrial development. An industrial park can be thought of as a more "heavyweight" version of a business park or office park ...
also containing a 2,806-acre habitat for the endangered
An endangered species is a species that is very likely to become extinct in the near future, either worldwide or in a particular political jurisdiction. Endangered species may be at risk due to factors such as habitat loss, poaching and in ...
Indiana bat
The Indiana bat (''Myotis sodalis'') is a medium-sized mouse-eared bat native to North America. It lives primarily in Southern and Midwestern U.S. states and is listed as an endangered species. The Indiana bat is grey, black, or chestnut in colo ...
. As of October 2020, the park hosted six companies and 130 jobs in addition to leasing land for agricultural purposes, supporting related industries. Additionally, NeCDRA has also obtained local infrastructure improvements, such as a $2.4 million waterline project, a $3 million shell building project, and a $12 million 230-69 kV electrical substation.
Timeline of VX production, storage, and destruction
See also
* United States and weapons of mass destruction
The United States is known to have possessed three types of weapons of mass destruction: nuclear weapons, chemical weapons, and biological weapons. The U.S. is the only country to have used nuclear weapons on another country, when it detonated ...
References
Works cited
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Further reading
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External links
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{{Authority control
Closed installations of the United States Army
Historic American Engineering Record in Indiana
United States chemical weapons depots
Buildings and structures in Vermillion County, Indiana
Military installations in Indiana
Chemical weapons destruction facilities
1942 establishments in Indiana