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Thursday February 26, 2004
Puebloans will have to wait at least another month to find out how soon work will commence on the destruction of the aging weapons at the Pueblo Chemical Depot.
Under terms of international treaties, the Army has to destroy 2,600 tons of mustard agent projectiles stored here.
Bill Pehlivanian, deputy program manager for the Assembled Chemical Weapons Alternatives program, told the local Community Advisory Commission Wednesday night that there should be a decision on how to move ahead with the project by late March.
Puebloans were shocked when President Bush's 2005 budget cut an expected $147 million from the Pueblo project while leaving similar ones intact and even adding funds to incineration programs.
Pehlivanian explained that the costs for the project as it was being designed by the Bechtel Pueblo Team were exceeding what the Pentagon wanted to spend but when commission member Joan Sowinski of the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment asked what amount the Army wanted to spend, he said that figure wasn't available.
Pehlivanian later clarified that by saying that the overall cost might remain the same, about $1.5 billion over a 10-year-period, the Army's decision to accelerate the project in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, moved many of the costs up instead of spreading them out over the duration of the work.
Now, with other military commitments, including the war in Iraq, the Army is saying it can't afford that much in the early stages of the project and has asked for less expensive alternatives.
That uncertainty was why the budget left Pueblo out, until such time as a new price tag for next year's work could be established.
He did say that the government was still committed to the environmentally-friendly, water-based method of destroying weapons and there was no pressure to switch to incineration, which Pueblo rejected.
John Schlatter of Bechtel, said that his company is continuing with its design work for the plant, which is 30 percent complete. Bechtel has 28 people working in Pueblo, 11 of them local hires, he said. In other business, Pueblo County Engineer Greg Severance said that there should be a decision by next month on the Defense Access Road project that will open up a northern entrance to the chemical depot and the weapons destruction plant.
The Army is expected to contribute funds to the county's improvements of the main thoroughfare through the airport industrial park. The project also calls for the extension of William White Boulevard from the industrial park to Colorado 47 and the widening of a section of the state highway that has only two lanes now.