Editorial
Published: January 04, 2009
Chem-demil plant taking shape; now employs 417
By PAUL HENRY and ANDERSON
Paul Henry is Bechtel Pueblo Team manager.
Gary Anderson is manager of the Assembled Chemical Weapons Alternatives program at Pueblo Chemical Depot.
COURTESY PHOTO/BECHTEL -- A recent aerial
photograph shows the construction under way at the Pueblo
Chemical Depot chemical weapons destruction plant. The
multi-year project now employs 417 staff and construction
workers, officials say.
This past year was all about change at the Pueblo Chemical Agent-Destruction Pilot Plant.
The landscape of the construction site was altered each and every day as new buildings and structures emerged from the ground. Looking back on 2008, we accomplished many milestones and we want to take a moment to share with the community how far we’ve come in just 12 short months.
In advance of issuing our construction permit, the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment issued four temporary authorizations, or TAs, to the project this year.
This allowed us to begin foundation work on two key structures: the Agent Processing Building and the Enhanced Reconfiguration Building.
However, our most notable permitting achievement of 2008 occurred on Oct. 17, when the state health department issued the Research, Design and Development permit.
The Design and Development permit is the last of the construction permits required for the project. It allows our team to move full steam ahead in building the remainder of the plant.
We would like to take this opportunity again to express our thanks to everyone who participated in the permitting process, specifically the project environmental team, their counterparts at state health, the Colorado Chemical Demilitarization Citizens’ Advisory Commission and our stakeholders.
Your contributions will ensure the highest levels of safety for our workers, the community and the environment.
Our dedicated team of experienced professionals expanded further in 2008, and our economic impact to the local community is as far reaching as ever.
The project now employs 417 people. Last year at this time the project employed 239 people.
Non-manual staff makes up 240 of our personnel with 78 of the group (32 percent) being Pueblo local hires.
The other 177 workers are craft workers with 117 (67 percent) local hires.
Additionally, there can be as many as 40 subcontractor personnel at the site on any given day.
Our acquisitions for the year constitute $169.2 million, with $54 million going to businesses in Pueblo and $32.2 million going to other businesses within the state. This means that 54 percent of our contract dollars are going to businesses in Pueblo County and Colorado.
Along with the growth and the increase of activity on the construction site, the Bechtel Pueblo Team reached a significant safety achievement in late summer when the project was awarded Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s Voluntary Protection Program Star Status.
The Bechtel Pueblo Team has a comprehensive safety culture, which has been adopted by the entire project team from craft workers to government staff. This commitment to safety continues to be paramount and will remain the cornerstone of our project’s success.
We also are proud of our Think Green Team, which is a volunteer multidisciplinary group made up of contract and government personnel. This group focuses on identifying, evaluating and promoting cost effective sustainable development initiatives, including recycling, carpooling, biofuels, product substitution and purchasing products with recycled contents.
Going forward, decisions pertaining to hydrolysate shipment, acceleration and funding are expected early in the New Year.
With the construction permit in hand, the project stands poised to make dynamic progress on the construction site in the coming year.
On behalf of the entire Pilot Plant team, we wish the Pueblo community a happy and prosperous New Year.
For more information, contact the project community outreach office at 546-0400 or 104 West B Street in the Union Depot Complex.
For employment information contact Bechtel at pueblo.bechtel. com.
Last month's warning that the start of chemical weapons destruction at the Pueblo Chemical Depot will be delayed nearly two years has provoked Sen. Ken Salazar, D-Colo., to call for swift action to find ways to finish the job by 2017, three years sooner than the Defense Department’s own finish date.
The Pueblo Chemical Depot has an aging stockpile of 780,000 artillery shells and mortar rounds holding 2,611 tons of mustard agent.
The destruction programs here and at the Bluegrass Army Depot in Kentucky, where mustard and nerve agent weapons are stored, are under the Assembled Chemical Weapons Alternatives Program.
In November, ACWA chief Kevin Flamm said that rising costs had pushed the start date back by 23 months for the programs but that a new report he planned to issue this month would address ways to meet the Pentagon's current completion dates of 2020 for Pueblo and 2023 for Blue Grass.
Congress has set a 2017 deadline for both but the Pentagon agency hasn’t changed its time line yet, because it has to come up with an estimate of what it's going to cost to accelerate the work and meet the lawmakers' demands. In his letter to John Young, undersecretary of Defense, Salazar indicated he believed that the funding was sufficient to meet the congressional deadline.
"Just a few months ago the Department of Defense reported that they expected to be able to meet the 2017 deadline that we set for destroying the munitions stored at the Pueblo Chemical Depot," he wrote.
"I worked on a bipartisan basis with my colleagues to deliver the funding the Pentagon requested to do the job. Now the Pentagon is saying that their funding request was too low and the project will be delayed. This is unacceptable and the Department of Defense needs to act swiftly to correct the problem. I fully expect the Pentagon to update its funding profile and its 2010 budget request to ensure that the weapons are safely destroyed by the 2017 deadline."