RICHMOND - The Pentagon has agreed to release money for the $2 billion plant that will destroy the chemical weapons stockpile at Blue Grass Army Depot -- an abrupt about-face that puts the project back on track.
In a memorandum sent Friday by Michael Wynne, acting undersecretary of defense, the Pentagon also said it would no longer consider transporting weapons to other disposal sites -- the nearest of which is in Anniston, Ala.
The holdup in funding and the possibility that the depot's 523 tons of lethal nerve and mustard agent might be loaded onto trucks or trains worried Madison County residents and angered members of Congress.
Yesterday, Kentucky's delegation welcomed the news that the money was flowing again.
"It seems that the Department of Defense recognizes the errors of its ways," U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell said in a statement. "As I've said all along, in order for the chemical weapons stockpile at the Blue Grass Army Depot to be safely destroyed, they need the funds to be spent at the facility and not tied up in Washington bureaucracy."
Earlier this month, the Kentucky Republican inserted a provision into the supplemental appropriations bill that will pay for the war in Iraq. The measure prohibits the Pentagon from transferring any of the $813 million appropriated in previous years for plants here and in Pueblo, Colo., to any other disposal site. It also requires regular accountings from the Pentagon of where money is spent.
McConnell was expected to work to keep that measure in the spending bill as it goes through Congress.
Pentagon officials told the Army to study alternatives, such as transportation, because of cost overruns at the two neutralization plants. Bechtel Parsons Blue Grass, which will build and operate the Kentucky plant, has been developing cost-cutting changes to the plans.
But in an April 11 letter to Wynne, the defense official, McConnell blamed the Pentagon's own mismanagement for the funding problem. By parceling out money in small increments and forcing redesigns of plans, McConnell said, the Pentagon not only cost taxpayers money but has brought the United States closer to violating the international treaty that governs disposal of the weapons. All of the original 31,500-ton stockpile is supposed to be destroyed by April 2012.
Four days later, Wynne told Assembled Chemical Weapons Alternatives, the agency that oversees the Kentucky and Colorado sites, that the funds appropriated for this fiscal year would be released. His memo did not specify how much money that would be.
Craig Williams of the Berea-based Chemical Weapons Working Group estimated the amount at $300 million.
"This is a tremendous development and a win for the citizens of Colorado and Kentucky," said Williams, whose group obtained and released documents earlier this year showing that the Pentagon was withholding money and revealing plans to cut budgets for the two plants.
McConnell noted the partnership between elected officials and Williams' group.
"Without their grass-roots advocacy, today's result would not have been possible," he said.
President Bush's proposed Fiscal 2006 budget calls for the plants to share just $32 million next year and provides no money for construction until Fiscal 2011. But Wynne predicted the release of the already appropriated money would enable work to continue through the end of September 2006.
"Today's announcement is the best news we have heard all year and proof that the Department of Defense is finally honoring its promise to the citizens of Central Kentucky," said U.S. Rep. Ben Chandler, D-Versailles. "I am pleased to see the Department of Defense come full circle on this issue."