136th Year... and
still on the
job!
Thursday October 27,
2005
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136th Year... and
still on the
job!
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Thursday October 27,
2005
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Construction of the airport industrial park's second access should get under way next June, according to Pueblo County Public Works Director Greg Severance.
Severance told the Colorado Chemical Demilitarization Citizens' Advisory Committee Wednesday night that an environmental assessment and Congressional approval of the spending package should be done by early next year so that design work can start in February.
The William White extension is part of a $21 million Defense Access Road project that will give the city's Airport Industrial Park its long awaited western entrance and make it easier for construction equipment, supplies and workers to get to the planned mustard-agent destruction facility at the Pueblo Chemical Depot.
The military base holds 780,000 artillery and mortar rounds containing mustard agent that must be destroyed by 2012 under an international treaty.
The total road project includes widening of Colorado 47 from East 13th Street to Baculite Mesa Road where it currently becomes four lanes, installing stoplights at the intersection of Colorado 47 and William White and at the point where United Avenue, William White and Paul Harvey Boulevard meet in the Industrial Park. Paul Harvey is the only access point to the Industrial Park now, via an underpass that has had flooding problems in the past. United and William White will be widened and improved, as will the DOT road up to the new northwest access point to the chemical depot. DOT Road is the extension of United to the northeast from the Industrial Park to the Transportation Technology Center.
The Defense Department is paying $18.6 million of the project cost while the county is contributing $1.7 million and the Colorado Department of Transportation $500,000.
The Defense Access Road is taking longer than expected but John Klomp, chairman of the CAC, said that it should be completed by the time work starts on the demilitarization facility. "This schedule will probably get us there," he said.
Joe Nemec, manager of the project for Bechtel, the prime contractor, said that he hoped to start site preparation in late 2006.
Work has been delayed for more than a year after Pentagon officials balked at the rising cost of the project.
Bechtel and the government's Assembled Chemical Weapons Alternatives agency spent several months redesigning the project and that redesign has been submitted to the Department of Defense.
Nemec said that early next year Bechtel will present to the Defense Department a plan with 60 percent of the design, sufficient for officials to make sure it matches the budget. That's the point Bechtel had gotten to more than a year ago, when it was acting on earlier Defense Department orders to accelerate the program, the main cause for the higher costs.Nemec said that next year he hoped to spend between $14 and $15 million for site preparation and underground utilities. In response to a question about longer-term jobs, he said that Bechtel probably would start hiring and training operations employees by 2008.
As of Oct. 19, he said that Bechtel had spent $15.7 million with Pueblo subcontractors, and another $1.6 million with other Colorado businesses.
Bechtel has already awarded contracts to RBK Construction for a fence and road running from DOT Road to the mustard-agent storage area, and will announce the winner of a contract for the access control point next month.