By JEFFREY McMURRAY
Associated Press Writer

An activist says a measure stripped at the last minute from a defense bill recently approved by the U.S. House could have delayed chemical weapons destruction in Kentucky by up to two years.

Craig Williams of the Chemical Weapons Working Group said Wednesday he doesn't know how the proposed language got into an early version of the 2011 defense authorization bill last week or even who proposed it.

The measure would have significantly changed the contract conditions for Bechtel-Parsons Bluegrass, the company in charge of building the neutralization site that will dispose of chemical weapons at Blue Grass Army Depot in Richmond.

The House passed the defense bill last Friday with an amendment by U.S. Rep. Ben Chandler, D-Ky., that dropped the wording.

Under the proposal, the five-year-old construction contract with Bechtel-Parsons would have been modified to require the company to cover many contingencies at a single fixed price. The current contract allows for reasonable expenses to be reimbursed by the government when they exceed estimates.

"For some reason, it seems to be the whipping boy of some people's agendas," Williams said. "Previously we've had all sorts of problems with funding requests coming to Congress from the Pentagon."

Officials with Bechtel-Parsons declined to comment, but Williams said if the contract conditions were changed, operations at the Richmond site could have halted and the company even could have opted out of the contract.

Williams has been a vocal advocate for neutralizing the weapons rather than incinerating them as in other states. He supports keeping the original deadline for destroying the weapons.

There was some mystery in who suggested the wording in the first place. A document from the Obama administration that accompanied the defense request said the administration "strongly objects" to the proposal because of a potential change in schedule without cost savings.

"Pursuit of a fixed price contract at this time would result in protracted negotiations and substantial delays in completing construction," the document says.

Richmond's stockpile has a variety of chemical weapons that are to be eliminated to comply with an international treaty, including mustard and the deadly nerve agents sarin and VX.

The storage sites in Richmond and Pueblo, Colo., are the only two in the nation yet to begin eliminating their chemical weapons. Under the current schedule, which has been pushed back several times, Blue Grass will already be the last to finish construction in 2016, the last to begin operations in 2018 and the last to complete the job in 2021.

"These weapons are deadly and right in our backyard," Chandler said in a statement. "We've been dealing with delay after delay for decades, and it is time to stop the setbacks and broken promises. The people of Central Kentucky deserve better. They deserve to be safe, and they deserve some peace of mind."
Chandler is running for re-election in November against Republican Andy Barr. A call Wednesday to Barr's campaign was not immediately returned.