Pueblo, Blue Grass Funds Pass Senate Committee
Wednesday, July 21, 2010

The U.S. Senate Appropriations Committee last week approved federal funding for chemical weapons disarmament efforts at the last two sites in the United States scheduled to finish destroying their stockpiles (see GSN, May 7).

The fiscal 2011 Military Construction and Veterans Affairs Appropriations bill contains $65.6 million for building a chemical agent neutralization facility at the Pueblo Chemical Depot in Colorado. The site holds 2,611 tons of mustard blister agent, which is scheduled to be eliminated by 2017.

"I've fought alongside Coloradans for many years to get adequate funding for a state-of-the-art VA hospital and to destroy the dangerous stockpile of chemical weapons. This bill ensures that we will continue to keep faith with our veterans and with the people of Pueblo," U.S. Senator Mark Udall (D-Colo.) said in a press release.

Construction continues on the neutralization plant along with a facility that would be used to treat hydrolysate waste produced in neutralizing the blister agent (U.S. Senator Mark Udall release, July 20).

The Blue Grass Army Depot in Kentucky would receive $59.4 million in the appropriations bill for construction of a disarmament facility that would destroy the site's stockpile of 523 tons of mustard agent and VX and sarin nerve agents. Chemical disarmament operations at the installation are slated to end in 2021.

The appropriations bill now must be approved by the full Senate.

The Defense Department agency that is preparing for chemical demilitarization operations at Blue Grass and Pueblo could receive a total of $511 million for fiscal 2011, which begins Oct. 1 (U.S. Senate Appropriations Committee release, July 1