Newport Chemical Depot

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The Newport Chemical Depot is a bulk chemical storage and destruction facility in west central Indiana, thirty miles north of Terre Haute operated by the United States Army.

Originally founded during World War II to produce RDX, a conventional explosive, it later became a site for chemical weapons manufacturing during the Cold War, producing the U.S. stockpile of VX nerve agent. It is now used to store securely and gradually neutralize part of this stockpile, some 1,270 tons (1,152 metric tons) being stored here. One drop of VX, if it comes in contact with the skin and is left untreated, can kill a grown man.

In 1999, the Army announced the awarding of a disposal contract to Parsons Infrastructure & Technology, Inc. More than 500 civilian employees work at the facility. They are overseen by an installation commander, a civilian site project manager, reporting to the U.S. Army Chemical Materials Agency, and a board of civilian government overseers called the Indiana Citizens' Advisory Commission. The board's members are appointed by the state governor.

The disposal project has experienced several delays, but on May 5, 2005, the facility announced that it would finally begin pumping VX into a completed disposal unit. The unit consists of a chemical reactor in which the VX is mixed with water and sodium hydroxide, heated to 194°F and stirred using mechanical paddles. The off-site transport of this wastewater for further treatment was one cause of delay in the program. This is a different method than the incineration which has been the primary manner of chemical agent destruction at other installations.

A test neutralization run began at 9 AM the morning of May 6, 2005. On May 9, the Army announced the test had been successful. After encountering initial difficulties when the temperature in the reactor grew too high, workers were able to adjust the speed of the device and turn 180 gallons of VX and water into a caustic but far less lethal compound than can be further reprocessed into an inert substance. As of July 2006, the Army has destroyed more than 65,000 gallons (274 ton, 249 metric tons) of VX at the Newport facility, and all of it has cleared to or below the 20 part-per-billion standard. By October 8, 2006, 28% of the weapons stored at Newport had been destroyed.

Security at the facility has been contracted since the depot's inception in 1941. Following the tragic events of September 11, the contractor (Mason & Hanger Corp.) was supplemented by a complement of National Guard. The soldiers were withdrawn on April 14, 2005 once the Army increased and certified the highly-trained contract security force.