Senator SYMINGTON. How about other places besides Europe? Does the $34 million include that? General COOPER. What we have done is look at the most dangerous and vulnerable ones and we are starting on those first. Senator SYMINGTON. If there is anything classified about it you can so state, but I wish you would provide, to the committee, what you plan to spend for each place that we have nuclear weapons. General CoOPER. Yes. Senator SYMINGTON. If the Congress were to provide the funds, could any of your planned fiscal year 1977 effort be expedited? General COOPER. Assuming that no objection to prefinancing or project approval is introduced by NATO, it is our opinion that the fiscal year 1977 effort could be expedited by the availability of additional funds. Senator SYMINGTON. I notice there is a lot of construction work going on in Europe, do we have any agreement that this is shared. with our Allies? General COOPER. Yes, that already had been agreed to. Senator SYMINGTON. We put up $175 million, how much do they put up? General COOPER. The $175 million is the total cost of the program. Senator SYMINGTON. The total cost of the shelter program? General COOPER. I am not sure of the grand total cost of the shelter program, I would have to get that from the Air Force. Senator SYMINGTON. The Air Force shelter program alone is $175 million and you are going to handle that, right? General COOPER. Yes. Senator SYMINGTON. How much are our allies putting up? General COOPER. They should put up between 70 and 80 percent of that, assuming this will be under the NATO infrastructure. Our share is about 27 or 28 percent, but in addition to that share we have gotten our allies to agree to other programs whereby they would fund portions of our construction in NATO. Senator SYMINGTON. So of the $175 million, you will get a rebate of about 75 percent? General COOPER. Yes, if NATO agrees to make this part of the program eligible for NATO funding. Senator SYMINGTON. Will you confirm that for the record? [The information follows:] The aircraft shelters in the FY 76 MCAF program are not now eligible for NATO funding. Although previous aircraft shelter programs have been eligible, the FY 76 request exceeds the present NATO criteria which limits shelters to a portion of the aircraft earmarked to NATO. The Air Force is continuing to press for expansion of present NATO criteria. Prefinancing statements will be submitted to protect the U.S. recoupment rights. Senator SYMINGTON. Can you handle this or will you get assistance from the Germans? General COOPER. We still use the German contractors and U.S. contractors, for that matter, and we don't do the architect-engineering work ourselves. Senator SYMINGTON. Who supervises this? General COOPER. Brigadier General Lou Prentiss, his father used to be a district engineer commissioner here. Senator SYMINGTON. Is he a career man in the Army? Senator SYMINGTON. Therefore, it is his responsibility is that right? General COOPER. Yes. If he needs help he has the whole Corps of Engineers to call on and he does from time to time, and we send people over there on temporary duty to make sure the designs are done. Senator SYMINGTON. Last year on the land acquisition at Fort Carson there was quite a discussion about it, as you know. We notice you requested quite a lot of land at this base again this year despite being turned down last year. What is the reason for this year's request? As you know, there was a lot of reaction from the local people out there. General COOPER. We feel we still need the land. You may remember last year your committee approved the revised program we had last year to acquire the land up on the northeast corner but the House Armed Services Committee did not and we lost out in conference. Would you like to see a map, sir? Senator SYMINGTON. No; I think I know this pretty well, Senator Dominick was on the committee, if you remember. General COOPER. Yes. The people up there are eager to sell. It had been a little bit of Senator SYMINGTON. How much would it cost? General COOPER. We have $7.2 million in this year's program. The amount of acreage we get will depend upon what we have to pay for the land. Almost all the recorded sales of land in recent years were to individual owners. These sales have been stopped. I believe most of the people that bought that land felt they got stuck. The land certainly isn't worth the price those people paid for it because there is no water available. The developer stopped selling any land in 1972. They sold about 400 parcels out of the 1,400 or so plots that they had. The exact amount of land we would get would depend upon the detailed appraisals. Senator SYMINGTON. The Army's program is conspicuous by the size of your request for deficiency authorizations. Would you care to comment? General COOPER. Yes, sir. A significant part, about $28 million, of our deficiency request is needed to complete air and water pollution abatement projects required by State and Federal regulations and laws. During the period of fiscal year 1968 through fiscal year 1975, approximately $219 million was authorized for MCA pollution abatement work. The fiscal year 1972 and fiscal year 1973 MILCON authorization laws contained $129 million of this total. At that time standards and criteria had not been fully developed by the various regulatory agencies and the scope of many projects had to be revised because of the energy crisis. In place of simple fuel conversions, it has been necessary to install costly pollution control equipment on existing coal-fired boiler plants. This required long lead times for manufacture and delivery of equipment. The technology to accomplish many of these projects also required extended research and pilot plant work to insure the use of economical and practical methods of treatment. Since many of the water pollution abatement projects will be tied into regional or local systems, it was necessary to delay execution until the necessary funding arrangements could be consummated. These necessary delays and changes in size, combined with the general escalation of costs since the projects were authorized, make it necessary to request deficiency authorization to proceed with the fiscal year 1972 and fiscal year 1973 programs. Deficiency authorization for the other MCA projects, except the new Walter Reed General Hospital, is required to provide facilities that cannot be constructed within prior year authorizations because of the much higher rate of cost escalation that has occurred since wage and price controls were lifted in April 1974. Among the projects requiring deficiency authorization are major barracks complexes at Fort Polk and Fort Leonard Wood on which design was not completed to permit advertisement for bids until after the controls had been lifted. There may be some reduction possible in our deficiencies due to lower bids, probably due to the current economic climate. On the Walter Reed General Hospital, approval of a 9-percent overrun was obtained to award a construction contract in August 1972. Subsequently, numerous contract changes have been required and more are anticipated to take care of unknown or changed field conditions encountered during construction, correction of efforts, or omissions in design, revised safety and accreditation criteria, new mission assignments, medical "state of the art" changes, and changes to the structure and utilities systems to accommodate Government furnished food service and medical equipment reflecting the latest technology. Senator SYMINGTON. Provide a list of all Army installations that are currently being studied with a view towards reducing their size or eliminating them completely. Is there any construction requested for any of these sites? General COOPER. Yes, sir, I'll provide that for the record. [The information follows:] We are presently studying the proposed establishment of an armament development center which could impact on the following installations: HQ Armcom, Rock Island, Ill. Picatinny Arsenal, N.J. Rock Island Arsenal, Rodman Labs, Illinois. Watervliet Arsenal, Benet Labs, New York. Edgewood Arsenal, Maryland. Aberdeen Proving Ground, Ballistic Research Labs, Maryland. This proposed action was briefed to the congressional delegations during February 19-28, 1975. As planning is undertaken for realinements, we concurrently review ongoing and projected construction projects and do not initiate or build projects we do not need. We are requesting authorization and funding for the construction of a research animal isolation facility at Aberdeen Proving Ground. Senator SYMINGTON. Discuss the increased facility costs due to seismic considerations. Provide maps and rationale for the recent changes in seismic zones. Provide the rationale for inclusion of costly design changes in the Army's facilities. General COOPER. I will provide that information for the record. [The information follows:] Increased facility costs due to seismic considerations result from (1) employment of more thoroughly developed seismicity information which indicates the seismic hazard exists in more areas, and that the intensity of probable forces is higher than previously considered for some areas. (2) employment of design criteria providing a better quality in seismic resistance including resistance for nonstructural, mechanical, electrical, and utilities systems, not just structural systems, a practice pointed out as necessary by performance of structures designed by previous criteria in the relatively recent San Fernando, California and Managua, Nicaragua earthquakes. Following are copies of seismic zone maps employed prior to 1973 and corresponding maps put in force for military construction in 1973. The pre-1973 maps were based on the historical record of earthquakes in the US, with largely unsubstantiated zone lines; the maps implemented in 1973 are based on further development and study of historical records, and recognition of known fault structures and the mechanisms of earthquakes by seismicity experts in the US Geological Survey. The maps implemented in 1973 for Army military construction, with one exception, are the same as the maps included in the Uniform Building Code of 1970 (International Conference of Building Officials), the Southern Building Code of 1973 (Southern Building Code Congress), a number of state and local building codes, and other federal agencies. The exception is that the Army recognizes a zone of potentially higher earthquake intensity, Zone 4, following the San Andreas fault in California and other faults extending into Nevada, and the major fault structure just off the southern coast of Alaska. Zone 4 criteria are applicable only to facilities with high-losspotential with respect to life and post-earthquake community support such as housing of three stories or more, hospitals, and fire stations. The rationale for seismic design for facilities in earthquake-prone areas is primarily to provide for life safety of occupants of facilities. Also, seismic design provides for control of damage in facilities and lesser loss-of-function and personnel displacement costs as a result of earthquakes. Costs for providing seismic resistance are considered as part of the total construction cost for certain areas. Seismic construction costs are warranted to preclude what would otherwise result in unacceptable loss of life and damage to facilities. The seismic design criteria applied by the Army are also applied for other Department of Defense construction. |