Editorial
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Thursday February 5, 2004
WE’RE GETTING to feel like Charlie Brown trying to kick the football. Just when it’s time to give it a good boot, Lucy Van Pelt pulls the ball away.
We’re talking about the chemical demilitarization program at Pueblo Chemical 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 for the chemical destruction.
OK. The enviros won, and it so was our hope that the prime contractor, Bechtel, could get on with the program. But last week someone yanked the football away again.
Local officials were warned that the demil program here could be put on hold indefinitely by cutting all funding at PCD and shifting it to incineration programs at other bases which have experienced cost overruns. Then this week the administration’s budget proposal which it sent to Congress gutted the anticipated $151.7 million for the next fiscal year by $146.8 million, leaving just $4.9 million.
That will hardly keep the lights on for such a massive undertaking.
County Commissioner John Klomp, who is the chairman of the Citizens Advisory Commission on the demil project, went to Washington seeking some assurance that the project would not be delayed indefinitely. Cryptically, Dale Klein, assistant secretary of defense on nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, told Mr. Klomp that the work at PCD would continue “in a timely manner.”
Pardon us, but that’s Washington bureaucratese for “buzz off.” It doesn’t tell anybody anything.
It’s time for our congressional delegation, notably Sens. Ben Nighthorse Campbell and Wayne Allard and Rep. Scott McInnis, the ask why Pueblo is being chosen as the bridesmaid, particularly when contracts have been signed or will be soon. We have our suspicions, because the Pueblo base has a bad reputation within the Department of the Army’s institutional memory going back to the 1960s.
But in any case, it’s crazy to put such a crimp on the program at hand. In a $2.4 trillion budget, $146.8 million is chicken feed. The delegation needs to get the funding back on track.
It’s time for Lucy to do the right thing and let Charlie Brown kick the ball.