136th Year... and still on the job!	Wednesday January 11, 2005

By JOHN NORTON
THE PUEBLO CHIEFTAIN

AVONDALE - The U.S. Army has made some progress in cleaning up the messes at what's now the Pueblo Chemical Depot, but that progress could slow down unless an agreement is reached with the state over how it's going to be done.

That was one of the points made Monday night by Stan Wharry, base realignment and closure coordinator, during the quarterly meeting of the depot's restoration advisory board, held at Avondale Elementary School.

Wharry said the Army has asked for a waiver of requirements contained in a 2001 Colorado statute that requires covenants be placed on land that can't be restored to environmental standards that would allow residential development.

If the land were suitable for open space or wildlife habitat, the Army could close out its cleanup efforts, but the covenants would restrict the use of the land unless the contamination eventually was removed. Wharry said that the Department of Defense is willing to make those restrictions part of its Resource Conservation and Recovery Act permit for cleanup.

That prompted Irene Kornelly, a member of the audience and a Base Realignment and Closure expert who serves on both the depot reuse authority board and the state's chemical weapons advisory commission, to point out that the Department of Energy had accepted covenants at Rocky Flats.

Wharry said he couldn't speak for the officials higher up who had made the decision.

Kornelly said after the meeting that Army officials earlier had welcomed the idea of covenants as a way of closing out cleanup issues at the base.

The Pueblo Chemical Depot has 59 solid waste-management units, sections of lands ranging from a few square feet to acres where soil and groundwater have been contaminated from decades of use by the Army.

The BRAC cleanup effort is separate from the chemical demilitarization program in which 2,611 tons of mustard agent in mortar rounds and artillery shells will be destroyed. That project is being handled by the Assembled Chemical Weapons Alternative program with separate funding.

Meanwhile, the Army is working to clean up the residual TNT, rocket fuel, petroleum products and other contaminants found around the base.

Wharry said that 24 of the 59 sites require no further action with most of them completed and the rest either in the process of completion or awaiting work in the next fiscal year.

The remaining 35 will be dealt with between now and 2012, but he warned that the dispute over covenants could make the Army reluctant to budget money for the work.

"It's coming to a point where it's going to start slowing down the program," he said. "It's starts making an impact on whether we get money or not."

Vince Potestio, an advisory board member and property owner who lives near the depot's southwest corner, asked why restrictions weren't being put on development outside the depot where water has been found to be contaminated.

He said that a property owner recently subdivided ranch land directly south of the depot into 5-acre lots. Potestio said buyers might drill wells based on positive tests and then find the water contaminated in a few months.

Wharry said that the Army would provide treatment systems to new homeowners just like it has to other residents of North Avondale. Marilyn Thompson, the depot's public affairs officer, added, "If they put in 200 homes or 1,000 homes, the Army is responsible."

Anne Cain, another community member of the advisory board, said that it shouldn't be up to the Army to control development outside the depot.

"Is that not an issue that should come up with the county commissioners and the planners?" she asked.

In other business, Ed Pasic, and environmental scientist, said that rocket fuel residue had been found in cleanout areas around two of the solid waste management units and in four of eight test wells. He said only one of the wells had levels above the allowable limits and more tests would be done to verify those results.

Environmental Engineer Chris Pulskamp said that the depot avoided a 60th solid waste management unit by excavating a patch of soil around one of the warehouses where petroleum, chrome and arsenic was found.

Chuck Finley, director of the depot's reuse authority, reported that leases were an all-time high of more than 668,000 square feet, topping the previous record in 2001 after which business took a nosedive because of the economy and security restrictions put on the base.

He said that the authority was putting together a plan to market the 34 miles of railroad track it now can sublease for railcar storage.