138th Year... and still on the job!	Thursday September 13, 2007

Senate committee advances mustard destruction date


By JOHN NORTON
THE PUEBLO CHIEFTAN

The U.S. Senate Appropriations Committee on Wednesday gave the Pentagon 10 years to finish destroying the nation's stockpile of chemical weapons.

Republican Sens. Wayne Allard from Colorado and Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, both members of the committee, supported the amendment, which mandates complete destruction by 2017 - 4-6 years faster than currently forecast.

The mustard agent stockpile here and the mustard and nerve agent weapons at the Blue Grass Army Depot in Kentucky are expected to be the last ones destroyed, partly because of delays imposed by the Defense Department when it reversed its own directive to accelerate the programs after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Completion dates have been set at 2021 for Pueblo and 2023 for Blue Grass.

"The time has come to set a clear and binding date for the destruction of all chemical agents at the Pueblo Chemical Depot," said Allard. "Under this amendment, all chemical weapons at Pueblo and Blue Grass will be completed no later than Dec. 31, 2017. Having worked on this issue, along with Senator McConnell and other colleagues throughout my entire tenure in the U.S. Senate, this is an enormous step forward."

A similar amendment was placed in the defense authorization bill in July, supported by McConnell and Allard along with Sens. Ken Salazar, D-Colo., and Jim Bunning, R-Ky. That bill was withdrawn before a vote, however.

The measure still falls short of the 2012 deadline in the Chemical Weapons Convention treaty, but it is ahead of what the Defense Department has predicted based on its plans to fund the two projects with only $150 million annually.

"If this amendment becomes law, from this point forward the cleanup effort would receive substantial budget increases to comply with this important mandate," Allard said. "The establishment of a hard deadline for the Department of Defense to destroy these weapons will ensure that cleanup will be a top priority."

The imposition of a deadline comes a day after the committee tacked on another $10 million to the $132 million in the president’s budget request for the two demilitarization programs.

Allard said the money would be used to expedite the purchase of equipment that will be used to dismantle the artillery shells and mortar rounds that contain 2,611 tons of mustard agent at the base and bio-treatment equipment that will be used to treat the liquid waste after the mustard agent is neutralized.

The Assembled Chemical Weapons Alternatives program, which oversees weapons destruction here and at Blue Grass, has not made an official decision on whether to treat the waste, called hydrolysate, on site or ship it out. However, the plans still include that option and the equipment will be purchased if no orders are given to go to off-site treatment.

Allard said a total of $40.8 million for Colorado defense industry and military installations was included as part of the 2008 Defense Appropriations bill.

COLORADO'S SHARE

In addition to the chemical depot funding, the panel also approved:

- $4 million for the University of Colorado-Colorado Springs to implement a homeland security Ph.D. program.

- $500,000 for Air Force Academy Center for Space and Defense Studies to provide advanced education and training for space commanders in the National Security Space community.

- $3.3 million for Air Force Space Command's National Security Space Institute.

- $2 million for Colorado State University's Center for Geo Sciences to continue critical studies to examine methods to prevent troop injuries and the destruction of equipment due to geologic and weather-related events and detect enemy vehicles and snipers.

- $2 million for the Colorado School of Mines to pursue their patented bacterial pathogens detection procedure that identifies bacteria at low levels.

- $2 million for the University of Colorado-Colorado Springs Space Education Consortium to implement programs designed to increase the number of students interested in science, space and engineering.

- $2 million for National Jewish Hospital to implement a Respiratory Biodefense Research program to focus on the prevention, detection and treatment of airborne toxins.