The Pentagon now estimates it will cost $3.6 billion to destroy a stockpile of mustard agent weapons stored at Pueblo Chemical Depot, an increase of $1.6 billion from earlier estimates.
Under current projections, the stockpile of 780,078 munitions at Pueblo isn’t scheduled to be destroyed until 2020 and a stockpile held at Blue Grass Army Depot in Kentucky won’t be destroyed until 2023.
The United States will be in violation of an international treaty if the weapons aren’t destroyed by 2012.
The Pentagon insists it is committed to destroying the weapons as quickly as possible, though it has twice revised deadlines to complete destruction of weapons by 2007 and 2014.
The Pueblo depot plans to neutralize the mustard agent with water.
Jean Reid, a special assistant at the Pentagon, said the delay and increased cost is a result of “really for the first time being about to come to grips with the details of the technology, the systems, the plant design. … When you wire all that together, that’s where the schedule takes you.”
“The funding is set to execute that program,” Reid said. “The department is firmly committed to destroying the stockpile as rapidly as possible.”
Under a new schedule, Pueblo is budgeted to receive $150 million a year for the next five years. Workers have already built an access road and a security gate and have nearly completed laying utility lines.
John Klomp, a former Pueblo County commissioner, said he would prefer the schedule that would have finished destruction by 2014.
“The bad news with this is that it is going to be a longer time before we can start hiring people. … The good news is that the work is probably going to last longer, so people will be employed longer.”
About 900 people will be employed at the peak of the destruction work.
Staff writer Erin Emery can be reached at 719-522-1360 or eemery@denverpost.com.
