136th Year... and
still on the job!
Tuesday April 19,
2005
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136th Year... and
still on the job!
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Tuesday April 19,
2005
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A local group got its first look Monday at Bechtel's preliminary plans to cut the cost of a chemical weapons disposal facility here.
For many members of what had been called the Acceleration Options Working Group, there was a definite sense of deja vu.
It was only a couple of years ago that the group approved Bechtel's plan to build a bigger plant than originally planned and to treat all of the material on site. That was caused by an order from an undersecretary of defense who wanted the 2,600 tons of mustard agent weapons destroyed as quickly as possible in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
That undersecretary's replacement has since put on the brakes on the whole process and told Bechtel to bring the project back to its original budget, set now at an inflation-adjusted $1.7 billion.
To do that, engineers and designers have spent the past 30 days reworking a plan that had been 60 percent complete last September. They came up with a weapons destruction plant that is smaller than the one planned as well as recommendations that some of the treatment be done off site.
The local panel, a subgroup of the Colorado Chemical Demilitarization Community Advisory Committee, will assess the ideas over the next six weeks and present its recommendations at the end of may to the CAC.
The new plan is expected to be presented in June to the Defense Department.
It will be reviewed during the summer and final design work could get started again by September - approximately one year after the Defense Department halted design work, citing rising costs.
Among the ideas presented include a smaller processing plant, and shipping explosives and the neutralized mustard agent off site for destruction at other plants.
The weapons stored at the Pueblo Chemical Depot are artillery shells and mortar rounds.
The plant would still disassemble the weapons, but the explosives used to propel them and burst them would be shipped to another facility for destruction.
The hydrolysate - the liquid left over after the mustard agent is neutralized - also would be shipped off site instead of being treated by bacteria at the Pueblo base.
All of those ideas were once rejected by the local group as they hammered together the original plan halted last fall. Ross Vincent, president of the local Sierra Club chapter and chairman of the panel, pointed out that other bases have been unable to find anyone to take their hydrolysate.
He also questioned what kind of sacrifices would be made in cutting costs from the original plan.
"I'm sure you guys can design a facility for $1.7 billion but I'm not sure it would be a facility anyone would want in their neighborhood," he said.
The question of safety also came up, prompting Gary Anderson, local manager of the program for the Assembled Chemical Weapons Group, to say, "We're not going to compromise on one iota of safety in this plant."