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Quick Resolution Sought for Design Issue of Blue Grass Chemical Weapons Disposal Plant
A senior official at the Blue Grass Army Depot in The Defense Department Explosive Safety Board is unfamiliar with the design of steel reinforcement to be used in concrete walls for rooms in which explosives would be removed from munitions. The matter could delay the beginning of construction of the facility, further complicating the depot’s ability to meet its congressionally mandated deadline of 2017 to neutralize 523 tons of blister and nerve agents. The Pentagon had previously estimated that weapons disposal would be finished in 2023. Officials are scheduled to discuss the issue next week in “I’d like to have things resolved before June, but I can’t predict at this point in time when it will be done,” he said during a public meeting. “I guarantee we’ll work on this as quickly as we can.” Doug Hindman, chairman of the Chemical Demilitarization Community Advisory Board, questioned why the issue developed after 80 percent of design work had been completed for the 87,000-square-foot facility. “We all take some blame for this,” Fritsche said. “I think it’s a fact that you get tied up in the design, and tied up in the project, and tied up in moving things forward, and you forget that you’re not bringing everyone else along with you. “If we had thought that this would be a problem, and had seen that earlier on, we would have gotten data to the [safety board], and we could have gotten calculations to them … beforehand,” he added. Safety remains the primary focus in preparing the facility, officials said. “When something goes ‘Boom!’ it’s never good, and a lot of times there are people nearby,” Fritsche said. If the safety board requires “more detail, we want to give them more detail” (Greg Kocher, Lexington Herald-Leader, March 12).
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