An environmental activist called Tuesday for officials to say when they would decide on a plan for disposing of wastewater produced through neutralizing chemical warfare materials stored at the Blue Grass Army Depot in Kentucky, the Richmond Register reported (see GSN, Oct. 29, 2008).
Options include treating the hydrolysate at the base or shipping the material for disposal at another site, as is being done with roughly 8,000 gallons of waste produced by a small-scale demilitarization project at Blue Grass (see GSN, March 4).
The matter did not come up this week during a briefing given to the Chemical Destruction Community Advisory Board.
“I’d like to know when we can expect a decision on this,” said Craig Williams, board co-chairman and head of the Kentucky Environmental Foundation. “And when the decision is made, I’d like to see it released to the public instead of waiting for the next quarterly (advisory board) meeting.”
The board plans to meet again on June 9. Full-scale disposal operations at Blue Grass could begin as late as 2021 (see GSN, Dec. 4, 2008).
The redesign of the plant's construction-containment building is being reviewed after a previous blueprint ran afoul of a military review panel, Mark Seely, project manager for general contractor Bechtel Parsons Blue Grass, told the board. The plant could be finished five months late due to the redesign, he said.
“We’re looking at ways construction can be accelerated to make up for some of that delay,” Seely said (Bill Robinson, Richmond Register, March 11).