136th Year... and
still on the job!
Friday April 30, 2004
|
|
||
|
|
136th Year... and
still on the job!
|
Friday April 30, 2004
|
Pueblo officials who have been working with the Army for more than a decade on the planned destruction of chemical weapons here hoped to get some answers at a meeting with Pentagon officials Wednesday night.
What they got was a new set of questions and some surprises about how much money has been budgeted for the project.
Upset over the Pentagon's recommended budget that trimmed the research and design budget for fiscal 2005 to just under $5 million from an expected $152 million, the community advisory commission met with the head of the chemical weapons destruction program at the group's monthly meeting.
Pat Wakefield, deputy assistant to the defense secretary for chemical demilitarization and counterproliferation, told the group that the Defense Department was worried that the Pueblo program would cost hundreds of millions of dollars more than expected and that the project was to be put on hold until prime contract Bechtel came up with a cheaper design.
He also said that next year's federal budget included $45 million in military construction funding, something that was news to commission Chairman John Klomp.
Nearly three months ago, Klomp got word that the research and design funds had been cut but that comes from a separate budget item. Other plants got their full funding and more to make up for cost overruns, triggering anger in Pueblo and accusations that the community was being singled out by Pentagon officials as punishment for heading off an original plan to incinerate the mustard agent weapons.
The plan now calls for an environmentally friendly water-based method to break down the explosives and mustard agent.
Wakefield also said that the Pentagon estimates there will be about $70 million left unspent from the Pueblo program's fiscal 2004 budget of about $120 million.
Together, the carryover and military construction funding total $115 million but the problem now is that no one knows how that money can be spent.
That's because Wakefield's office has asked for the plant to be redesigned, something Mike Park, program manager for the Assembled Chemical Weapons Alternative said could set back work six months to two years. An accelerated system, which the Defense Department wanted in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, included three processing lines.
A Pentagon analyst provided figures at Wednesday meeting showing that a two-line system would reduce the size of the plant and the work force but still allow the project to meet a 2012 treaty deadline to destroy the weapons.
Klomp believes that work could get started if Wakefield's office would allow it to move ahead while Bechtel works on a redesign.
"There are some parts of the facility that aren't going to change regardless of the design reconfiguration," Klomp said. "They could start on the support facilities, perhaps even roads.
"You could start purchasing equipment. It doesn't matter if it's a two-line or a three-line process," he said. "There is a lot equipment you're going to need. They can reconfigure from three lines to two lines as equipment is being bought."
Klomp said that processes like the removal of explosives and propellants from the weapons won't be affected by the redesign and work could get started on those portions of the plant.
Bechtel spokesman John Schlatter said Thursday that initial construction work was still scheduled to begin this fall but wasn't able to say yet what the funding source would be.