136th Year... and still on the job!	Sunday January 30, 2005

A LONG WAIT

Contractors, unions still waiting for windfall

By JOHN NORTON
THE PUEBLO CHIEFTAIN

CHIEFTAIN PHOTO/FILE Scott Gardner (right), coordinator of the Plumbers and Steamfitters apprentice training, looks over the test work done by Manuel Mares at Local 20 headquarters in 2003. Many people were recruited two years ago to work on the chem demil program but have had to find other work in the meantime.

"It's like Lucy and Charlie Brown with the football."

That's how Cortez Construction owner Carla Barela describes the way Pueblo contractors feel about the potentially lucrative chemical demilitarization program, stalled repeatedly by the Department of Defense for an ongoing series of studies.

Ms. Barela, president of the Pueblo Association of General Contractors, said it's very frustrating for small businesses, which for years had expected to benefit from the project.

Estimated to cost between $1.5 and $2.5 billion, chemical demilitarization was expected to last 10 years as the Army destroyed 2,600 tons of mustard agent contained in more than 750,000 artillery shells and mortar rounds.

The plan in Pueblo, and at the Blue Grass Army Depot near Lexington, Ky., is to use robots to take apart the explosive shells, put the mustard agents through a water neutralization process and then use bacteria to dispose of the leftover chemicals.

The work is expected to generate more than 1,000 high-paying jobs in construction work and operational jobs. And since it's a federal project, contractors are required to pay prevailing wages for all work.

For Pueblo's economy, the demil project has meant a return, if only for a decade, to the glory days when blue-collar workers were making good money. The boost would be so great, a sustainable development committee was set up by prime contractor Bechtel and now operated by local officials to help prevent another collapse like what happened in the early 1980s when CF&I Steel and other major employers cut back.

Things were moving along smoothly until early last year.

Because the Army had chosen to use water neutralization rather than try to build an incinerator as it has in other areas, state health department permits were approved with record speed in a streamlined process that allowed work on early phases to get started.

But then, the 2005 fiscal year budget submitted to Congress in February gutted Pueblo's funding for this year. Sen. Wayne Allard, R-Colo., managed to get $50 million of the expected $152 million restored and that, combined with carryover money from 2004 would have been enough to continue work on the first phase of the project that included preparing the site, planning for the second phase, which included a laboratory and control room and design work at facilities around the country for the third phase, the actual weapons destruction facility.

Much of the first phase work was expected to be started this year. Bechtel had called for bids for as much as $30 million in work, including construction of an access control point, an earthwork package, an underground utility package, fencing, surveying and a small engineering contract to certify construction work. But two weeks ago, about 75 contractors planning to bid on those jobs were told not to submit them when the Defense Department ordered the Army's Chemical Materials Agency to stop all work at the Pueblo Chemical Depot and at Blue Grass and to do a study of transportation alternatives, most likely the option of moving mustard agent out of those bases to incinerators at Anniston, Ala.; Pine Bluff, Ark., or Tooele, Utah.

Bechtel officials aren't commenting on the latest delay, other than to acknowledge that the work has been stopped. The contractor's staff is careful not to say anything after coming under fire last year in a Defense Department audit for even telling Pueblo officials about the FY 2005 budget cuts.

But the situation must be frustrating, since Bechtel has been working for two years to encourage local contractors to become pre-qualified to bid on demil projects, running seminars and even having a full-time office dedicated to helping small businesses.

It's also frustrating for those businesses, many of whom have to spend a lot up front to prepare bids only to have the entire process put on hold.

"You spend time, you pay employees to put together bids and do research and go to meetings and then they pull the rug out from under you," Ms. Barela said. "That's put a real damper on people who have planned for this."

It's also been hardship for the hundreds of skilled workers hoping to find a job close to home. Bechtel began working with the Colorado Building and Construction Trades Council early on to let the unions know how many people it would need and what kinds of skills they would have to have.

Union apprenticeship programs started recruiting young people and putting them through training programs with the expectation that many of them would be working by now.

"It's extremely disappointing," says Neal Hall, business manager for the statewide building and trades council.

Hall, a Pueblo native who now lives in Penrose, said that the unions have found work for many of those apprentices but at jobs in Colorado Springs and Denver. "It makes it really difficult for Pueblo people," he said, "to have the stress of driving to Denver every day for work."