Richmond Register
September 30, 2003

Bechtel Parsons Blue Grass project manager values community

Register News Writer
By Jodi Whitaker

He may not know many people in Richmond yet, but after tonight, Chris Midgett hopes that will change.

Midgett, project manager for Bechtel Parsons Blue Grass — the company which will perform the work necessary to destroy 523 tons of chemical weapons stored at the Blue Grass Army Depot — will meet the public tonight at an open house. The open house is designed to introduce Bechtel Parsons Blue Grass and the other players in the chemical demilitarization process to the community. The event will be from 5 to 7 p.m. tonight at Eastern Kentucky University’s Perkins Building.

“We truly believe it is important to be open with the public on what’s going on,” Midgett said. “I’m trying to get out and talk to as many groups as I can...to discuss the project, communicate our status and talk about issues. And hopefully, the public will have various forms of input on how the project is conducted.”

Born in Nashville, Tenn., Midgett moved around the country a lot with his family growing up, including his father, who was in the Navy.

After following in his father’s footsteps and graduating from the Naval Academy, Midgett went on to Naval post-graduate school in Monterey, Calif., where he received a master’s degree in nuclear physics.

Midgett then spent seven years in the Navy’s nuclear submarine program, and spent some time working on a submarine which collected intelligence off the Russian coast.

“We spent a lot of time at sea, and it wasn’t good on the family,” Midgett said. “So after seven years, I decided to get out.”

From there, Midgett went to work for Westinghouse, where he worked on nuclear engineering products in various locations.

In Washington, D.C., Midgett managed a facility called PUREX — which stands for Plutonium Uranium Extraction — dissolving nuclear fuel and acid with a chemical process which separated out the plutonium that was used in chemical weapons. There, he helped shut the facility down after the mission was complete.

After that job, Midgett said he was asked to head up proposals to bid on the chemical demilitarization program.

A little over two years ago, Midgett was hired with Bechtel, and went to work in Idaho at an engineering lab where he managed a test reactor which tested fuels and materials mainly for the Navy’s nuclear submarine program.

“I had spent two years doing that when I got a call that this bid was coming up, and they asked me to help head up the bid process for Blue Grass,” Midgett said.
Midgett has been with the project since the Bechtel Parsons company decided to submit a bid for the job in January, and is currently traveling back and forth between Kentucky and Pasadena, Calif. during the design stage of the process.

Next June, Midgett plans to move his wife Jane — who is now in Idaho where she is co-founding a charter school — to Richmond to settle down for the remainder of the process, which will take more than 10 years to complete.

As the project to destroy the weapons stored at the Blue Grass Army Depot continues, Midgett said there are some key things he wants the community to know his company is intent on providing — including safety and efficiency.

“We’re going to operate this facility as safe as possible,” he said. “We have a proven track record in safety. We far exceed the industry standard nationwide in the chemical industry and the nuclear industry. Our record is good.

“Number two is the efficient destruction of the weapons,” Midgett said. “We want to do this right, and we want to do this right the first time. We want to rid this community of chemical weapons as soon as we can.”

Jodi Whitaker can be reached at jwhitaker@richmondregister.com.