138th Year... and still on the job!	Friday September 8, 2006

Work begins on chem demil plant

By JOHN NORTON
THE PUEBLO CHIEFTAIN

Acres of once empty prairie slowly are being transformed as the northeastern portion of the Pueblo Chemical Depot is being prepared for a $1.7 billion weapons destruction program, which at its peak will employ more than 1,000 people. Army and Bechtel officials opened the site Thursday for a rare press tour, showing the land that will be graded for the weapons destruction plant and a new access control point on the road that will be the main route to the site. The Army plans to destroy 780,000 mortar rounds and artillery shells that contain a total of 2,611 tons of mustard agent. The weapons are stored in igloos in the depot’Äôs tightly secured G-Block in the norther part of the World War-II era military base. The destruction facility will be built directly east of G-Block. Inside the plant, the weapons will be dismantled, the explosive sections will be shipped to another location for destruction and the mustard agent will be neutralized in hot water. The water then will need to be treated, but the location still hasn’Äôt been decided. The state’Äôs Chemical Demilitarization Citizens’Äô Advisory Commission has urged the Army to treat the liquid, called hydrolysate, on site. That would mean more jobs as well as eliminate any problems associated with shipping the liquid, which is considered hazardous waste. Bechtel, the prime contractor on the project, has designed a plant that could include on-site treatment of the hydrolysate if the Army takes that option. The treatment plant would use bacteria to break down the chemicals produced in the neutralization process to a salt that can be hauled to a landfill. The water then could be recycled back to the neutralization plant. Paul Henry, Bechtel’Äôs project manager for the plant, said that the biotreatment facility could have a longer lifetime than the weapons destruction program and could be used at the chemical depot, or dismantled and shipped to another location where a treatment facility is needed. Mike Parker, director of the Army’Äôs Chemical Materials Agency and head of the Assembled Chemical Weapons Alternatives program that oversees the Pueblo and Blue Grass Depot programs, will be in Pueblo next Wednesday to attend the Citizens Advisory Commission meeting. He is expected to discuss the issue then. Construction of the weapons destruction building won’Äôt get under way until late next year, but in the meantime, Bechtel has been doing a lot of preparation work. Nearly complete is the Northwest Access Road, which will provide a new entryway to the depot. Leading from the Department of Transportation Road, which runs from the airport industrial park to the Transportation Technology Center, the new road runs more than six miles along the northern border of the depot to the weapons destruction site. About a mile and a half from the DOT road, an access control point is being built by subcontractor Richard E. Gash Electric of Wheat Ridge. That $6 million project is expected to be completed by the end of the year. Workers currently are putting up an office building where visitors will receive identifications and fabric covered canopies where vehicles will be inspected.

CHIEFTAIN PHOTOS/JOHN JAQUES Workers stretch the fabric cover over a canopy where vehicles entering the Pueblo Chemical Depot will be inspected. The work is part of the access control point along a new entrance road. Paul Henry, Bechtel project manager at the Pueblo Chemical Depot, describes how the plant will look. The facility will be built on the empty field behind him. With inspection station canopies in the background, crews work on the new Pueblo Chemical Depot access road. Bechtel spokesman John Schlatter describes how the new northern access road will provide a link from the Department of Transportation Road, in the background, to the chemical demilitarization facility.

The new access road will shift traffic away from the depot’Äôs longtime south entrance and tied to U.S. 50 by an
aging interchange.

The Army hasn’Äôt indicated its plans for the south entrance but when access to the chemical demilitarization site is
shifted, security could be relaxed at the main entrance so that civilian tenants of the Reuse Authority’Äôs igloos and
warehouses could come and go more easily.

In addition to the depot project, the Defense Department has provided much of the funding for a Pueblo County
and state highway project that will improve the main arteries through the industrial park and link the park directly
to Colorado 47 so that traffic can avoid U.S. 50 if necessary. That work should start in the spring.