138th Year... and still on the job!	Sunday February 18, 2007

A $54 million boost

EDITORIAL
THE PUEBLO CHIEFTAIN

DEFENSE SECRETARY Robert Gates has upped the ante for demilitarizing chemical weapons at Pueblo Chemical Depot and Blue Grass Army Depot in Kentucky.

Last week Sen. Wayne Allard said Mr. Gates has increased the administration's funding request for the next fiscal year by $54 million. That would be on top of the original $297 million White House request for the two projects.

This is good news because officials of the Assembled Chemical Weapons Alternative program handling the projects at both depots had been told last year to expect no more than $150 million annually for each facility for the duration of the program.

Extra funding means there now is a better possibility that the work can be started sooner rather than later, which means the complete destruction can be completed in a timely fashion.

Still undecided is what to do with the residue left over from the water neutralization process to be used. Local officials have been pressing the Army to process those hydrolysates here rather than shipping them off somewhere else.

The chance of doing that task on site may have been bolstered after a DuPont plant in New Jersey recently declined to process hydrolysates from a chemical weapons plant in Indiana.

Sen. Allard's chief of staff, Sean Conway, cautions that the extra funding sought by Secretary Gates is not a sure bet to survive, but he expressed optimism that the House would go along with it. We hope so.

This project has taken way too long to get started, and the cost has increased substantially with each passing year.