Lesington Herald-Leader
Tue, Jun. 17, 2003

Bechtel venture is picked to destroy depot's weapons

By Greg Kocher
CENTRAL KENTUCKY BUREAU

A joint venture between two California companies, one of which was recently selected to lead the rebuilding of postwar Iraq, has been awarded a contract to destroy the chemical weapons stockpile at Blue Grass Army Depot in Madison County.

Late last week, the Department of Defense selected Bechtel Parsons Blue Grass to design, build, operate and close a plant that will destroy the 524 tons of chemical weapons and other munitions stored at the depot between Richmond and Berea. The work will span a decade and has an estimated total cost of $2 billion, according to the company.

Bechtel Parsons Blue Grass is a joint venture of Bechtel National Inc. of San Francisco and Parsons Infrastructure and Technology Group Inc. of Pasadena. The program has four subcontractors: Washington Demilitarization Co., Battelle Memorial Institute, General Physics, and General Atomics.

Bechtel has been in the news since April, when the U.S. Agency for International Development awarded it the major contract to rebuild Iraq, a project that could be worth $680 million over 18 months.

The first order of business under the Blue Grass Army Depot contract is to develop a plan to design and build the plant that will destroy the chemical weapons.

The plant design might be finished in a couple of months, said Craig Williams, executive director of the Chemical Weapons Working Group, a national coalition based in Berea that advocates the safe non-incineration of chemical weapons.

There are already talks under way to have the state Natural Resources and Environmental Protection Cabinet authorize other aspects of the project not related to weapons destruction. Those include aspects "like the laboratory, the support buildings, getting utilities in, putting in roads, parking lots -- all the kinds of things you're going to need regardless of the final design of the treatment facility," Williams said.

"If the regulatory authorities will allow that, which we think they are going to do, they could be pushing dirt over there by late summer or early fall," he said.

To destroy the weapons, a neutralization process will be used. The mustard agent stored at Blue Grass Army Depot will be destroyed with warm water, and the nerve agents VX and GB, also known as sarin, will be neutralized with a mixture of warm water and a caustic solution. The lethal chemical weapons will be contained within the neutralization system until they are destroyed, then byproducts will be passed through a reactor under intense heat and pressure for final treatment.

Unlike the Army's incinerators that release unburned agents and other toxic chemicals into the environment, this disposal method does not require an air contamination permit.

"The technology is sound. It's much safer than incineration," Williams said. "Bechtel and Parsons understand the need for community involvement, oversight and accountability."

Bechtel already has contracts to neutralize the chemical weapons stored in Aberdeen, Md., and Pueblo, Colo. Parsons has the neutralization contract for the bulk VX stockpile in Newport, Ind.

Since 1944, the Army has stored about 2 percent of the nation's original chemical weapons stockpile at Blue Grass Army Depot.