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Posted on Wed, Mar. 12, 2008
Depot officials look to quickly answer safety concerns
MUNITION DISPOSAL SITE'S DESIGN QUESTIONED
By Greg Kocher
gkocher1@herald-leader.com
RICHMOND -- Officials hope to quickly answer questions that a Pentagon board has about the design of a proposed building that would destroy 523 tons of chemical weapons at Blue Grass Army Depot.
Those questions will be addressed next week at a meeting in Washington, D.C., said Jim Fritsche, the top government manager of the project. "I'd like to have things resolved before June, but I can't predict at this point in time when it will be done," Fritsche said. "I guarantee we'll work on this as quickly as we can."
Fritsche made his comments Tuesday at the quarterly meeting of Chemical Destruction Community Advisory Board on the Eastern Kentucky University campus.
The Department of Defense Explosive Safety Board has questioned the design for the munitions demilitarization building, where the chemical weapons will be destroyed. The board specifically has questions about the rebar, or steel reinforcements, in the concrete for the walls of rooms that must be able to withstand an explosion. The board is not familiar with the rebar design submitted by Bechtel Parsons Blue Grass, the company that is designing and will operate the building.
Resolving the issue is important if the building construction is to remain on schedule. Concrete is to be poured this summer, but the Pentagon board's concerns could delay that. Other buildings to be built as part of the project will not be hindered.
The design work for the 87,000-square-foot munitions building is more than 80 percent completed, said Mark Seely, project manager for Bechtel Parsons Blue Grass. That raised a question for Doug Hindman, chairman of the Chemical Demilitarization Citizens' Advisory Commission.
"How does it happen that this problem emerged at the end of the line?" Hindman asked.
"We all take some of the blame for this," Fritsche said. "I think it's a fact that you get tied up in the design, and tied up in the project, and tied up in moving things forward, and you forget that you're not bringing everyone else along with you.
"If we had thought that this would be a problem, and had seen that earlier on, we would have gotten data to the Department of Defense Explosive Safety Board, and we could have gotten calculations to them ... beforehand. We made the assumption -- and you know about assumptions -- that Parsons ... had designed other facilities before using this type coupler, and that it wouldn't be an issue. We shouldn't have made that assumption."
Bechtel Parsons designed "blast-test facilities" for the Navy that use similar rebar couplings, Seely said. And national labs for the U.S. Department of Energy have also used such couplings, Seely said.
Seely reminded the audience that the safety board members are "simply trying to do their job."
Officials emphasized that safety is the top priority.
"When something goes 'Boom!' it's never good, and a lot of times there are people nearby," Fritsche said. So if the safety board needs "more detail, we want to give them more detail."
Reach Greg Kocher in the Nicholasville bureau at (859) 885-5775.