136th Year... and still on the job!	Thursday January 20, 2005

Soap opera

EDITORIAL
THE PUEBLO CHIEFTAIN

IT’S BEGUN to sound like a television soap opera, where there’s little movement of plot but much intrigue and, in some cases, deception.

We’re talking, of course, about the saga of the demilitarization of chemical weapons at Pueblo Chemical Depot. Last week, the official overseeing the programs at PCD and the Blue Grass Army Depot in Kentucky received a letter from the Defense Department telling him to halt all Phase 1 work for 90 days while the Army studies “transportation options.”

To a lot of people, this sounded like the Army is trying to find a way to ship the chemicals to other sites where chemical weapons are already being destroyed, such as Tooele Chemical Depot in Utah. Currently there is a proscription for doing this under federal law unless there is a presidential declaration of a state of emergency.

This latest turn of events is just another in a long history of stalls which have beset the work at the Pueblo depot. The Army originally wanted to build an incinerator to get rid of the mustard blister agent stored in shells and cannisters at PCD, and the Army had started advertising for bids when a group of environmentalists got the plan derailed. They finally persuaded the Army to adopt an alternative technology, known as water neutralization, for the chemical destruction.

OK. The enviros won, and it was our hope that the prime contractor, Bechtel, could get on with the program. But every time it seems that something is going to get done, there is another delay.

Last year the Army vastly scaled back the amount of money it would spend at this installation, much to the chagrin of Sen. Wayne Allard, who has been championing the cause of getting rid of the stuff as quickly as possible. Now that he has been named to the Senate Appropriations Committee, he might be able to steer funding back this way. We’re sure he will have the backing of newly elected Sen. Ken Salazar.

We’d remind the Army that the United States is under a treaty obligation to get rid of these weapons by 2010, so every delay just brings more pressure to get the job done once it’s begun. Furthermore, each delay raises the cost, even in an era of low inflation.

It’s time to stop dithering and to get on with the job at hand.