136th Year... and
still on the job!
Thursday March 31,
2005
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136th Year... and
still on the job!
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Thursday March 31,
2005
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The weapons destruction program at the Pueblo Chemical Depot should begin seeking bids again in April and over the next few months, but the long-term future of the project remains unclear.
The Pentagon's own projections indicate construction of the actual plant will not start until 2012, just a few months before all weapons should have been destroyed under an international treaty.
Gary Anderson, local manager for the weapons destruction program, told the Colorado Community Advisory Commission Wednesday night that funds would be available to complete unfinished work that was budgeted last year.
He also said that fiscal 2005 money would allow all stage 1 construction work to be finished along with design work on the plant where the weapons will be destroyed. The design of the actual plant remains frozen until a less expensive alternative is developed.
In all, about $30 million in work will be started this spring and summer, he said, on fences, surveys, soil testing, road work and a new access point.
The Defense Department stopped all work at the Pueblo base in January, after bid requests had been sent out to a number of local contractors. The halt was called while the Chemical Materials Agency was ordered to conduct a study of alternatives, including shipping weapons from Pueblo and other bases to existing incinerators at other facilities.
Even though the study has yet to be completed, funding for initial phases of the project here was released last week, something local officials attributed to political pressure from Colorado senators Wayne Allard and Ken Salazar, and Rep. John Salazar.
The Defense Department has not asked for any funding for the project in the 2006 budget year that starts next fall, but Anderson said there will be enough money carried over from this year to finish the stage 1 work.
However, later in the meeting, CAC member Ross Vincent displayed a Pentagon chart that shows after next year, a long period of no work at all and only "caretaker status" for the stockpiles in Pueblo and at the Blue Grass Army Depot in Kentucky.
The chart was part of a presentation Vincent used to counter statements made last month when Pat Wakefield, deputy assistant to the secretary of defense for chemical demilitarization and threat reduction, met with the commission.
Commission member John Thatcher, whose land abuts the chemical depot, offered the resolution to send Vincent's points to the Pentagon, saying, "We've got to get this information out there." He said that the commission needed to counter what he said were lies about what was happening with the Pueblo program.
Vincent's presentation addressed a number of things Wakefield said, including his claim that the Pueblo program was over budget and failed to qualify for funding under a law that said water neutralization plants like the one at Pueblo can't cost more than incinerators.
Vincent pointed out that Congress has yet to ask for certification of the Pueblo price tag and even if the design Bechtel was working on did grow from an initial estimate of $1.6 billion to $2.6 billion, it was still cheaper than the $3 billion to $5 billion being spent on incinerators.
The Defense Department also accused the Assembled Chemical Weapons Alternatives agency, in charge of the program, and Bechtel of mismanagement, to which Vincent responded, "baloney."
He used the Pentagon's own chart that showed budget estimates for the entire weapons destruction program growing from $2.1 billion in 1986 to $29 billion last year. "This has nothing to do with Pueblo or Blue Grass," he said. "This is mismanagement of the program (by the Pentagon)."
Vincent also asked that the Pentagon admit it had changed its priorities from an order three years ago that the program be accelerated for national security and that it admit it wasn't going to get the weapons destroyed by the deadline set in the Chemical Weapons Convention treaty.
Bechtel, the contractor named to work on the project, has been told to redesign the plant as a smaller facility to save money and the Assembled Chemical Weapons Alternatives agency and a CAC subcommittee will start studying alternatives in a couple of weeks with plans to have a recommendation to the Pentagon by early summer.
CAC Chairman John Klomp said that the Pentagon needs to be reminded that downsizing the plant and extending the time frame for weapons destruction is no guarantee of lower costs and could make the entire process more expensive.