[Peace-discuss] new nuclear-weapons facility: "Farmland is being readied for a nuclear crop" - Kansas City Star article

[Stuart Levy]

[An article about the new nuclear-weapons plant being built outside
of Kansas City, owned by Honeywell.  The plant makes the non-nuclear
components of nuclear weapons.  This is the site where Allison and Sam
went to protest earlier this summer.  This plant will replace an existing
facility, also in Kansas City.  A number of objections, including
that toxic materials at the existing plant were not being cleaned up,
were overruled, and the new facility's groundbreaking will be
this Wednesday, Sept. 8th.  "Also expected at the groundbreaking
are peace activists, some of whom expect to be arrested."

This article had been posted to the United for Peace and Justice
(unitedforpeace.org) mailing list... -SL]

Date: Sun, 05 Sep 2010 11:51:40 -0700
From: Jackie Cabasso <wslf at earthlink.net>
Subject: [ufpj-activist] Farmland is being readied for a nuclear crop - KC
	STAR
To: ufpj-disarm at yahoogroups.com,
	thinkoutsidethebomb <thinkoutsidethebomb at yahoogroups.com>,
	abolition-usa at yahoogroups.com, Abolition-Caucus at yahoogroups.com,
	ufpj-activist at lists.mayfirst.org, inourlifetime at googlegroups.com

VERY informative article. - Jackie

http://www.kansascity.com/2010/09/04/2200220/farmland-is-being-readied-for.html#ixzz0yefcyXTn

*Posted on Sat, Sep. 04, 2010 10:15 PM*


*Farmland is being readied for a nuclear crop*

By KEVIN COLLISON

The Kansas City Star

   * _Bulldozers are rolling on a billion-dollar project that will
     transform a former soybean field in south Kansas City into
     America’s only privately developed plant making parts for nuclear
     weapons_.

When it comes to the area economy, there is no question about the 
importance of the facility being built for Honeywell Federal Manufacturing 
& Technologies.

With 2,500 workers, the Honeywell plant now in the Bannister Federal 
Complex is the area’s third-largest manufacturing facility, after the 
Ford and General Motors factories.

The replacement project will keep 2,100 well-paid Honeywell jobs in Kansas 
City. About 1,500 construction workers also will be needed to build the 
five-building, 1.5 million-square-foot campus, the biggest construction 
project since the Sprint campus was completed a decade ago.

The new plant will be unique in another way.

The current Honeywell operation in the federally owned Bannister complex is 
tax-exempt. But because the new plant is a private development, it will be 
on the local tax rolls for the first time. When fully operational in 
mid-2014, it will generate $5.2 million annually in local property tax 
revenue, according to the development officials.

“I think it’s huge for Kansas City at a time Kansas City needs good 
news,” said Brad Scott, a former federal official who helped guide the 
deal, which was more than four years in the making.

A groundbreaking ceremony set for Wednesday at the 185-acre site at 
Missouri 150 and Botts Road is expected to attract dignitaries such as Sen. 
Kit Bond, a Missouri Republican; Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, a Missouri Democrat; 
and Thomas P. D’Agostino, the top executive with the National Nuclear 
Security Administration, the federal agency in charge of the Honeywell 
contract.

Despite the ceremonial fanfare, the project has its critics. Also expected 
at the groundbreaking are peace activists, some of whom plan to be arrested 
for trespassing.

“There’s no justification … to the local economy that justifies 
putting the whole planet at risk,” said Ann Suellentrop, a registered 
nurse who leads the area chapter of Physicians for Social Responsibility.

Opponents of nuclear proliferation had hoped to gain the support of the 
Obama administration to block the project. But that effort lost traction 
when the administration supported maintaining the current nuclear arsenal.

_When asked to comment about the Kansas City project, a White House aide 
referred to a statement President Barack Obama issued last April._

_“So long as nuclear weapons exist, we will maintain a safe, secure and 
effective arsenal,” the president said_.

The Kansas City plant is an integral part of the U.S. nuclear arms 
infrastructure, producing 85 percent of the non-nuclear parts that go into 
a typical weapon, federal officials said.

Much of its current workload, according to a recent federal report, is 
extending the life of the W76 missile warhead, a submarine-launched weapon 
seven times as powerful as the Hiroshima bomb.

*The development push*

The project is being developed by CenterPoint Zimmer LLC for the National 
Nuclear Security Administration. The construction price is $443 million, 
but other costs, including $263 million to relocate operations from the 
Bannister complex, will drive the final cost near $1 billion.

The massive endeavor started in spring 2006 with a rumor that Honeywell 
wanted out of Bannister. The former World War II defense plant was 
converted to producing nuclear weapons parts at the dawn of the Cold War in 
1949.

The 3.2 million-square-foot plant employed nearly 8,000 people at its peak 
in the 1980s, but it is down to 2,500 workers. Honeywell wanted something 
smaller and more efficient.

It costs $400 million annually to operate the current facility, and a new 
plant would save about $100 million a year, federal officials said. There 
also was talk of consolidating its operations at a nuclear arms facility in 
New Mexico.

The key initial challenge was obtaining authorization from Washington.

Persuading Congress to pay for the project up front in the normal federal 
budget process was considered unlikely, said Scott, who at the time was 
administrator for the General Services Administration Heartland Region.

Instead, the GSA decided to pursue a private lease deal. In January 2008, 
Congress authorized a proposal that allowed the agency to lease the project 
from a private developer. The agency was allowed to pay up to $38 per 
square foot, or $58.9 million annually over 20 years.

The decision to build the plant privately will make the Kansas City 
facility an exception among the seven other facilities around the country 
used to make nuclear weapons, including the Lawrence Livermore National 
Laboratory in California and Sandia National Laboratory in New Mexico.

All are owned by the U.S. Department of Energy, the parent agency of the 
National Nuclear Security Administration.

“We are a unique operation within the (National Nuclear Security 
Administration),” said Mark Holecek, the federal official in charge of 
the Kansas City plant. “We have no nuclear materials at all here. … 
This is essentially an aerospace facility.”

Another unusual aspect of the Kansas City project is the participation of 
local government.

As a private development, half the new property taxes — $2.6 million a 
year — will be diverted over 25 years to help pay for road improvements 
and other infrastructure work required for the project.

The biggest public entity that will benefit under the plan is the Grandview 
School District, with annual property tax revenue from the development site 
jumping from $652 a year to $1.6 million, development officials said.

*Clearing hurdles*

The search for the private developer began in late 2007. A short list was 
identified in April 2008. But that summer, the project experienced a “bid 
bust” when none of the finalists offered a proposal that came in under 
the $38-per-square-foot cap.

Scott said the bid bust was the low point in the effort to keep Honeywell 
in Kansas City. The agency had wanted to have the Kansas City project under 
way before the Bush administration left office in January 2009.

“I was very concerned,” he said. “The undercurrent was, with a change 
in administration, what would be the new administration view of our nuclear 
arsenal?

“There was also a real threat of being consolidated with other 
operations, Sandia (New Mexico) being one of them.”

But it turned out the election of Obama made no difference.

After the bid bust, Scott said, his agency “fought like crazy” to 
persuade administrators in Washington to allow changes to the plan and 
reopen bidding.

In April 2009, CenterPoint Zimmer, a venture between Zimmer Real Estate 
Services of Kansas City and CenterPoint of Oak Brook, Ill., was chosen as 
developer. It edged out DST Realty of Kansas City and another group, 
Quality Lease & Development of Overland Park.

The other area players on the CenterPoint Zimmer team are J.E. Dunn 
Construction Co., HNTB Architects, both of Kansas City, and Johnson 
Controls of Lenexa.

Only one major obstacle remained.

Opponents had filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Washington in 
October 2008 opposing the plan on environmental grounds. They had argued 
that the proposal failed to address substantial environmental problems at 
the Bannister plant and challenged the private development aspect of the 
deal.

That roadblock was removed in October 2009 when a federal judge dismissed 
the suit.

Holecek said the Nuclear Security Administration would not leave behind an 
environmental mess at Bannister.

“It will be ready to be marketed to another user,” he said.

The final public step came in February, when the Kansas City Council 
approved the tax breaks for the infrastructure improvements.

Councilman Ed Ford cast the lone dissenting vote.

“If they were building widgets, I’d have supported it,” Ford said. 
“The fact is they’re building components for nuclear weapons and, in 
good conscious, I could not vote for it.”

Last week, Bishop Robert Finn of the Catholic Diocese of Kansas City-St. 
Joseph issued a statement regarding the groundbreaking ceremony. It 
reiterated the church’s opposition to nuclear weapons because of their 
massive, indiscriminate destructive power and expressed hope that “one 
day this facility may be transformed from a producer of weapons into a 
producer of goods that benefit all mankind.”

But for Jim Cross, the CenterPoint official in charge of the project, the 
Kansas City plant is a vital element in the defense of the U.S.

“It’s a deterrent,” he said. “When you look at what’s going on 
all over the world, if this saves our men and women in the armed forces, 
helps protect them … it’s a wonderful thing.”

*Campus-like design*

Grading work has begun at the site, and the first concrete is expected to 
be poured in October. Structural steel should begin rising from the site 
early next year.

For J.E. Dunn, the project is expected to generate 20 percent of its local 
revenue over the next three years. The project comes as the area 
construction industry still struggles with the economic downturn.

“Our work force is about 65 percent of what it was three years ago,” 
said Dirk Schafer, executive vice president at J.E. Dunn. “This will let 
it jump 10 to 15 percent.”

The campus will consist of five structures and is being designed to meet 
the LEED Gold standard set by the U.S. Green Building Council.

Perhaps the most complicated part will be managing the move from the 
Bannister facility to the new campus. Two-thirds of the equipment at 
Bannister will be relocated.

“We are a production facility and those products (will) need to be 
shipped regularly” to avoid too much of a disruption in production, 
Holecek said.

While the buildings are scheduled to be completed in November 2012, the 
plant won’t be fully operational until more than 18 months later because 
of all the inspections, testing and relocation involved.

Don’t expect any armed convoys ferrying the industrial guts of the old 
plant to its replacement eight miles away.

“We’ll try to be as discrete as possible moving equipment,” Holecek 
said. “The majority of what we’re moving is commercially available 
industrial equipment. This will be nothing in the way of a military 
operation.”


*Kansas City plant timeline *

*1943: *The federal government builds a massive plant on Bannister Road 
during World War II for Pratt & Whitney to produce military aircraft 
engines.


*1949: *The plant is converted to manufacture nuclear weapons parts, and 
Bendix Aviation Corp. wins the contract from the Atomic Energy Commission. 
(The company name evolves to become Allied Bendix Aerospace, then 
AlliedSignal and finally Honeywell Federal Manufacturing & Technologies.)

*1988: *The plant work force peaks at about 7,850.

*2006: *Honeywell decides it wants a smaller, more efficient facility, and 
employment dwindles to 2,500.

*April 2007: *The federal General Services Administration identifies a 
185-acre field at Missouri 150 and Botts Road as the location for a new 
plant.

*January 2008: *Congress authorizes a leaseback plan to privately develop a 
1.5 million-square-foot replacement facility.

*April 2009: *CenterPoint Zimmer LLC is chosen as the developer.

*February 2010: *The Kansas City Council approves tax incentives for the 
project.

*July 2010: *CenterPoint Zimmer completes its financing.

*Sept. 8, 2010: *Groundbreaking ceremony.

*November 2012: *Construction scheduled to be completed.

*Mid-2014: *New plant expected to be fully operational.

To reach Kevin Collison, call 816-234-4289 or send e-mail to 
kcollison at kcstar.com <mailto:kcollison at kcstar.com>.

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*sonoflaw* 
<http://www.kansascity.com/personas?plckUserId=0a280319850cd9e0d4d8068c614255a1-2193764&insiteUserId=0a280319850cd9e0d4d8068c614255a1-2193764>* 
wrote on 9/4/2010 11:36:37 PM:*

Time to write our President, again he is being sideswacked.
Oil hungry GOP said DRILL DRILL DRILL, then cried when he stopped it.
Put the plant in the Sprint Campus, it is nothing but weeds.
Soybeans are food, weeds are just that.

*John_Galt* 
<http://www.kansascity.com/personas?plckUserId=0a280319850cd9e0d4d8068c614255a1-2318942&insiteUserId=0a280319850cd9e0d4d8068c614255a1-2318942>* 
wrote on 9/4/2010 11:15:26 PM:*

A totally unnecessary boondoggle. There is absolutely no reason why the 
current facilities can't handle the ever-dwindling demand for parts for the 
nuclear arsenal.  Now the taxpayers will have to cough up rent money, in 
perpetuity, for this 'campus.  'Good deal for the landlord. BAD deal for the 
taxpayer, i.e., YOU.