Allard Seeks Assurance On Pueblo Chemical Depot

Apr 28, 2005 7:03 am US/Mountain
DENVER (AP) Sen. Wayne Allard threatened Wednesday to block the nomination of a Defense Department undersecretary unless he is sure the agency will stick to plans to build a plant to destroy chemical weapons at a Pueblo stockpile.

Ken Kreig has been nominated to replace Michael Wynne as undersecretary of Defense for acquisitions and logistics. Earlier this month, Wynne told Congress the Defense Department planned to move ahead with design and construction of plants at the Pueblo Chemical Depot in Colorado and the Blue Grass Depot in Kentucky.

"I am not convinced this nomination should go forward until I get some straight answers from the department," Allard, a Republican, said in a statement.

Sen. Allard has scheduled a meeting with Kreig on Thursday. A hearing on Kreig's nomination has been conducted in the Senate Armed Services Committee, of which Allard is a member, but a date has not been set for Kreig's nomination to be brought to the floor.

"Specifically, I want to hear about his commitment to use neutralization technology to destroy the chemical weapons at Pueblo, and to not transporting the weapons to a different site for destruction," Allard said.

At the Pueblo depot, plans call for using water and other liquids to neutralize about 2,600 tons of mustard agent stored in 780,000 weapons. The Kentucky site also will use water neutralization.

Earlier this year, a Pentagon official said that design was put on hold because the original $1.6 billion price tag had ballooned to at least $2.6 billion.

The Pentagon had frozen about $813 million that Congress had approved for building the destruction plants. Officials recently released about $70 million of that, enough to allow progress to continue slowly.

"And I also want assurances that the department will fully fund this project," Sen. Allard said.