136th Year... and still on the job!	Thursday February 24, 2005

Locals grill defense official on demil delays

By JOHN NORTON
THE PUEBLO CHIEFTAIN

It will be at least another two months before high-ranking Defense Department officials will even begin to consider possible changes in how 2,600 tons of mustard agent weapons will be destroyed at the Pueblo Chemical Depot.

Pat Wakefield, deputy assistant to the secretary of defense for chemical demilitarization and threat reduction, faced more than an hour of questions from the public and members of the Colorado Chemical Demilitarization Citizen's Advisory Commission after he explained the DOD's version of why the Pueblo weapons-destruction program has faced repeated delays.

Wakefield was invited to the meeting by Rep. John Salazar, D-Colo., who also spoke in favor of moving the project forward.

The latest setback came last month when all spending on construction was frozen by the Defense Department while it conducted a three-month study of alternatives to the weapons destruction programs that have not yet been started in Pueblo and at the Blue Grass Army Depot in Kentucky. That halted the issuance of about $30 million in contracts that could have gone to area businesses for the initial phases of the project.

The construction of the actual weapons destruction plant was already on hold since last fall after the Defense Department asked that the facility be redesigned to cut costs.

Wakefield told the commission and the crowd of about 150 people gathered in the Pueblo Convention Center that the cost of the weapons destruction program, nationwide, had grown from $2.1 billion in 1986 to an estimated $29 billion with little chance that the growth would level off in coming years.

He admitted that the growth in the expected cost of the Pueblo program, to $2.6 billion from an original target of $1.6 billion, was only part of the problem. "The cost increases have spanned all of the facilities."

He said that the Defense Department study was looking at a number of alternatives, including building a smaller facility than planned, moving the weapons and changing the contracting process to open up the construction and operation of the plant to competitive bids after the prime contractor, Bechtel, finishes the design work.

In an effort to dissuade suspicions that some in the Pentagon were still determined to build an incinerator here, Wakefield said that if the weapons were destroyed in Pueblo, there would be no change in the plan to use water neutralization and biotreatment, the method preferred by environmental groups.

A consistent theme of questions from both the commission members and the public was why another study was needed after years of previous studies that developed the current plan for water neutralization and biotreatment.

Some in the audience also weren't convinced that moving the weapons to another site to be incinerated was only an "alternative" as Wakefield described it.

The Pentagon has come under criticism from local officials and Colorado's Congressional delegation for revisiting the transportation question, and Wakefield admitted that moving the weapons would require a change in federal law or an order from the President after the determination that there was a national emergency.

"That is reality and we are not going to break the law," he said, although he added that Undersecretary of Defense Michael Wynn had ordered that all options be studied before work could move forward.

Few could understand why the Defense Department doesn't just acknowledge that costs are higher and ask Congress for the money. Avondale farmer Doug Wiley said that whenever he hears the siren at the chemical depot, "I look at my watch to make sure it's straight-up 12 o'clock. If it's not we'd better start running. You're telling me we're going to go through this for another 15 years?

"By God, go back there and get the money and finish this project."

At the close of the meeting the commission adopted a resolution calling on the Defense Department to stop the study and its "unwarranted criticism of the Assembled Chemical Weapons Alternatives Program" and release funds for the first phase of the project that should already be under way.