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Senate to Consider Stalled CW Disposal Sites
The U.S. Senate is expected next week to consider a defense bill amendment forcing the Defense Department to maintain funding for the construction of chemical weapons disposal facilities in Colorado and Kentucky, the Associated Press reported today (see GSN, March 24). Senator Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) added the amendment this week as the Senate Appropriations Committee reviewed and then approved the funding package. “Our goal here is to get them back on track heading in the direction of meeting the timetables we laid out,” McConnell said. The Pentagon has frozen roughly $740 million while it looks for cheaper alternatives to the neutralization facilities planned for Pueblo, Colo., and Blue Grass, Ky. (see GSN, April 7). The price tag for developing the sites is growing “at a disturbing rate,” according to an Appropriations Committee report (see GSN, Feb. 24). Under the amendment, project managers would have to spend $100 million of the money within four months of the bill’s passage, while the Defense Department would update Congress every two months on the projects and U.S. efforts to meet disposal deadlines under the Chemical Weapons Convention, AP reported. Money for the projects could also not be moved to other projects, and the Defense Department would be barred from looking at relocating weapons from Colorado and Kentucky to operating disposal facilities in other states. “They can study it until they’re blue in the face, it’s not going to happen,” McConnell said. “It’s a waste of their time and energy to be studying something that has no possibility of ever occurring” (Hilary Roxe, Associated Press/SFGate.com, April 8).
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