136th Year... and still on the job!	Saturday May 8, 2004

Senate panel backs funding for chemical depot work

Wayne Allard

By JOHN NORTON
THE PUEBLO CHIEFTAIN

Colorado's congressional delegation won a major victory in its campaign to reinstate next year's funding for an accelerated weapons destruction program at the Pueblo Chemical Depot.

Sen. Wayne Allard, R-Colo., announced Friday that the Senate Armed Services Committee had voted to restore $147 million to the fiscal 2005 budget for Pueblo.

"We have scored a major victory for the people of Pueblo and Southern Colorado," Allard said.

The House Armed Services and Appropriations committees also will have to approve the measure but Pueblo County's lobbyist, former Congressman Ray Kogovsek, was optimistic that support from Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell and Rep. Joel Hefley, whose House district includes Colorado Springs, will help get the funding approved.

The Pentagon's budget request published in February allocated less than $5 million for design and construction work on a facility here that will be used to destroy 2,600 tons of weapons containing mustard agent.

Local officials had expected almost $152 million to be budgeted, but Defense Department officials said that design of the Pueblo plant was becoming too costly and they asked for changes to reduce those costs. Figuring it would take time to redesign the plant, the budget request for Pueblo next year was substantially reduced.

The Pentagon had asked for $45 million in military construction funding for Pueblo next year but that would not have helped get the plant built if plans were still being re-engineered. The local Citizens Advisory Commission, which wants the weapons destroyed as soon as possible so that the Army base can be turned over to civilian uses, protested the cuts and last week grilled Defense Department official Pat Wakefield on the reasons for the cut.

Commission Chairman John Klomp said that the committee action was "very good news for Pueblo." Klomp credited the new support for Pueblo to a large turnout at the commission meeting last week that showed the community's solidarity.

He said that if the funding is restored, it would mean Bechtel can move ahead with its original design and speed up the destruction of the weapons.

Local officials were especially upset by the earlier budget cut because other chemical weapons destruction projects were funded to cover cost overruns. Wakefield said it would be irresponsible to shift that money to Pueblo and cause layoffs elsewhere.

A spokesman for Allard's office said that the committee vote called for additional funding to cover the costs of work in Pueblo next year so other demilitarization projects would not be affected.

Allard said, "The DoD’s earlier funding request was inadequate and contrary to the stated goal of the Department of Defense’s Chemical Weapons Demilitarization program: the accelerated destruction of our chemical weapons stockpile by 2012.

"But I prevailed on the committee to give the Pueblo Depot project the high-priority funding status it deserves."

"Bottom line here is that the facility’s weapons stockpile needs to be disposed of for homeland security reasons and in order to meet the 2012 Chemical Weapons Convention Treaty deadline," Allard said.

Allard said that in the next few weeks he plans to meet with Michael Wynne, an undersecretary who is the senior Defense Department official in charge of the weapons destruction program, to discuss getting the program back on track.