138th Year... and
still on the job!
Thursday April 13,
2006
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138th Year... and
still on the job!
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Thursday April 13,
2006
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Thirty years after the Army announced plans to destroy all its aging chemical weapons, the secretary of defense has admitted to Congress that the job won't be done in time to meet an international treaty deadline.
While that admission may come as no surprise to the many Puebloans who have watched the effort here stalled by Pentagon officials, it finally puts the Defense Department on the record saying that it's not going to get the job done on time.
In letters to Sen. John Warner, R-Va., chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., who heads the House Armed Services Committee, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said the United States will ask to have a 2007 deadline extended to 2012, but added that only 66 percent of the nation's chemical weapons stockpile would be destroyed by the later date.
Sen. Wayne Allard, R-Colo., who has been a steady critic of the Pentagon's delays, said Tuesday, "I am very disappointed because, if the work at Pueblo had continued uninterrupted over the past two years, it might have been possible for at least the Pueblo Depot site to have been completed in time for the 2012 extended treaty deadline, although work might have remained unfinished at the other sites."
There are 2,611 tons of mustard agent stored at the Pueblo Chemical Depot in artillery shells and mortar rounds. The Defense Department, after telling its contractor Bechtel to speed up the project in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, then halted all work because of rising cost projections, and set the project back about two years.
Allard said his worry now is that if the nation can't comply with the treaty deadline, it may take even longer to destroy the dangerous stockpiles.
"Unfortunately, the department did not provide any clear indication of a schedule for completion of the Pueblo project, in particular, and all the other demilitarization sites in general," Allard said. "I'll be working to make sure that the Department of Defense isn't using the treaty as a way to back out of its commitments to Pueblo or the other sites.
"Since our obligations under the (Chemical Weapons Convention) Treaty will no longer be motivating the department, we will need to step up our efforts to ensure the department does not lose sight of the importance of the chem-demil program. The last thing we want is for department to think it can allow these projects to drag on forever."
So far, it appears that the Pueblo project is back on track. The fiscal 2007 budget request for the two Assembled Chemical Weapons Alternatives (ACWA) programs under development, at Pueblo and at the Blue Grass Depot in Kentucky, totaled $350 million.
"On the one hand, this year's budget request was a significant step forward. But, as always, the proof is in the pudding. The DOD's future funding request is the place where we are really short and where the greatest fight will surely take place," Allard said. "If the department comes through with a substantial future funding request this summer, then I will feel a lot better about this project and the department's commitment to it."