WARREN Defense stockpile center remains open

The Warren depot is one of four stockpile centers deemed a 'core depot.'
By SHERRI L. SHAULIS
VINDICATOR TRUMBULL STAFF
WEATHERSFIELD -- Truck and train cars filled with material leave the Warren Depot of the Defense National Stockpile Center daily. Yet despite the reduction in materials there, the site will remain open at least through 2007.
The Warren Depot on Pine Street Extension in Weathersfield Township is one of nine manned centers in the country. Several unmanned satellite centers are also operated by the federal government. Government officials, however, have decided that all the excess materials are no longer needed -- and neither are all nine depots.
"As of this time, we are not closing, and we have not been giving a closing date," said John D. Pittano, distribution facility manager at the Warren Depot. "Our projections are to operate at least through the year 2007. We are still on the books, but that doesn't mean things couldn't change."
Four 'core depots'
The Warren Depot, which employs 10 people, is one of four Defense National Stockpile Centers named a "core depot" by Congress, and is scheduled to remain open even after excess materials are sold off from all stockpile locations.
The other three sites scheduled to remain operational are in Somerville, N.J.; Point Pleasant, W.Va.; and New Haven, Ind.
Operating since 1950, the Warren Depot was created by the Department of Defense as a holding facility to store items Congress deemed critical strategic materials needed in case of war.
Many of the items are materials not native to the United States, explained Pittano. The site, at one time or another, has stored everything from rubber and goose and duck feathers to magnesium and silicon carbide.
The Warren Depot is one of the few stockpile centers designed specifically for that purpose, Pittano said. Other sites were used by the government's General Services Administration for other reasons, then converted into stockpile centers.
Stockpiling unnecessary
In recent years, however, Congress has determined the stockpiling of some items is unnecessary, and therefore allows the Department of Defense to sell them off to buyers with proper credentials. Most of the time, the companies that sold the items to the federal government in the first place are the ones buying them back, Pittano said.
He said that each fiscal year, the government decides how much of the stockpiled materials it will sell off, then determines how much to release at any given time so as not to disrupt market values. Materials may be released monthly or quarterly, he said.
Once the amounts and dates are determined, the government will post the items for sale on the Internet.
"Almost anyone with the right credentials can buy the materials," Pittano said.
While the site will remain open at least until 2007, Pittano said he is hopeful either Congress, the Department of Defense or the newly created Homeland Defense council will seriously look at materials that may need stored at the facility.
"I am always hopeful a serious review will be made that shows the value of the materials we store here," he said.
Currently no materials are being brought in to the site for storage, but as other stockpile centers close, their inventory could come to Warren, Pittano said.
slshaulis@vindy.com