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Friday February 27, 2004
By JOHN NORTON
THE PUEBLO CHIEFTAIN
WASHINGTON - Kentucky's U.S. senators joined Colorado's Thursday in calling
on the Pentagon to restore funding to the 2005 federal budget request for
the weapons destruction program in Pueblo.
Colorado's Wayne Allard and Ben Nighthorse Campbell were joined by Kentucky's
Mitch McConnell and Jim Bunning in urging the Defense Department to put back
the $147 million originally budgeted for research and development for the
Pueblo Chemical Depot's weapons program. All four senators are Republicans.
The Army plans to destroy the Pueblo depot's 2,600 tons of shells and projectiles
containing mustard agent, but funding for the next fiscal year was all but
eliminated in President Bush's budget. Kentucky is interested because a similar
weapons destruction program is in the works for Bluegrass Depot in that state.
In a letter to Michael Wynne, the acting undersecretary of defense for acquisition,
technology and logistics, the senators urged that the department's FY 2005
funding request be revisited in order to include $272 million for chemical
weapons cleanup research and development.
They also asked the Defense Department to provide them with a detailed description
of how it plans to complete the destruction of chemical weapons by 2012.
The letter reads, "It was our understanding the ACWA program would receive
$272 million in fiscal year 2005 for research and development. Yet, the president's
budget request provides only $124 million for research and development. This
funding request is inadequate and contrary to the stated goal of the Department
of Defense's Chemical Weapons Demilitarization program: the complete destruction
of our chemical weapons stockpile by 2012.
"It is estimated the $147 million cut to ACWA's Pueblo . . . stockpile will
practically end substantive (research and development) at that facility for
the entirety of FY05, delay the destruction of the Colorado stockpile by
up to 18 months, and negatively affect the design and schedule for the Bluegrass
facility."
They called the cut "disturbing."
The letter also asked for a detailed strategy for weapons destruction at
facilities that will be using the environmentally-friendly water-based method
chosen for Pueblo and Bluegrass as well as other sites that opposed the Army's
original incineration option.