[GPSCC-chat] Fwd: [ufpj-activist] Farmland is being readied for a nuclear crop - KC STAR

[fred]

  Friends,

Regarding this article, "Farmland is being readied for a nuclear crop":

Here's more evidence that the DemoRepub party, including President 
Obama, is in harmony with the Military-Nuclear Weapons-Industrial Complex.

I think the Green Party should take a leadership role in confronting the 
involved entities carrying out this crime against humanity.  Civil 
disobedience may have to be part of a strategy.

Other minor parties should also be encouraged to join in actively 
opposing the nuclear weapons movement.

In the spirit of peace, justice and open discussion,

Fred D.

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: 	[ufpj-activist] Farmland is being readied for a nuclear crop - 
KC STAR
Date: 	Sun, 05 Sep 2010 11:51:40 -0700
From: 	Jackie Cabasso <wslf at earthlink.net>
Reply-To: 	wslf at earthlink.net
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>.

*Join the discussion*

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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.



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