Colorado has declared legal war on the Pentagon in an effort to speed the destruction of aging chemical weapons at the Pueblo Chemical Depot.
The state Department of Public Health and Environment filed suit Tuesday in U.S. District Court seeking a court-ordered deadline for the breaking down and neutralizing of the mustard agent and toxic chemicals at the depot.
“There have been so many delays,” said Gary Baughman, director of the state’s hazardous materials and waste management divisions, “we felt we needed an enforceable schedule.”
For more than 50 years, the Pueblo facility has stored about 780,000 artillery and mortar rounds containing 2,611 tons of mustard agent in 94 igloos.
In addition, four igloos hold 26 containers of chemical munitions that are leaking plus more than 500 containers that are overpacked, according to the state’s lawsuit.
The Department of Defense killed a plan in 2004 that would have completed treatment in 2012 because it was too expensive, according to the state’s suit.
A second plan developed in 2005 with a completion date in 2014 was also shelved.
Congress then provided funding to complete the weapons destruction at the Pueblo depot and the Blue Grass Army Depot in Richmond, Ky., and a provision was attached that ordered completion by 2017.
The Pentagon’s Assembled Weapons Alternatives Program now has a target date of 2020 for completion of the project, said spokesman Katherine DeWeese.
It has been difficult to set dates because of technical and financial limitations and because a new technology is being used, DeWeese said.
“This is a first-of-a-kind plant using neutralization and bio-treatment” instead of proven, but controversial incineration, De Weese said.
“All the pieces have to be tested and production will begin slowly,” DeWeese said. “It would be difficult to have an arbitrary date.”
DeWeese said that the earlier plans were “unaffordable at the time.”
The department’s contractor, Bechtel Corp., was asked to “go back and balance affordability with completing” the project, DeWeese said.
The redesigned Bechtel facility in Pueblo is 63 percent smaller with a reduced processing rate.
The Defense Department accepted the proposal, but then stretched the implementation schedule until 2020, according to the Colorado lawsuit.
Craig Williams, director of the nonprofit Chemical Weapons Working Group, in Berea, Ky., said that the Pueblo and Kentucky projects lost momentum in 2004 when the Pentagon shifted funds to cover cost overruns in chemical weapons incineration projects that were underway.
“We’ve gained some momentum in the last couple of years, and I realize that Colorado would like a hard date,” said Williams, whose advocacy group is a watchdog over the Kentucky weapons disposal program.
“I just don’t know if 2017 is possible.”
U.S. Sen. Ken Salazar, a Colorado Democrat, was one of the sponsors of a provision in the weapons destruction bill setting 2017 as the the completion date.
“It’s now the law of the land,” said Salazar’s communications director, Matt Lee-Ashley.
“The Department of Defense needs to comply.”
“Congress and the state of Colorado are going to have to hold the (department’s) feet to the fire until the last weapon is safely destroyed and it is all cleaned up,” Lee-Ashley said.
Irene Kornelly, chairwoman of the citizen’s advisory commission monitoring the situation, said: “The community just wants these weapons gone.
“I am hoping that the lawsuit will force everybody to sit down and talk about how to meet this 2017 deadline,” she said.
Mark Jaffe: 303-954-1912 or mjaffe@denverpost.com
