(4) Airfield central heating plant to support permanent construction under fiscal year 1955 MCA program. (c) The total number of persons now stationed at Davison Army Airfield is 207, broken down as follows: (d) By December, 1955, the full complement of persons authorized is expected to reach a total of 282. Colonel SHULER. It is a little more than a cow pasture, Mr. Flood. We can show you a map with facilities on it. Mr. FLOOD. I would like to see it. Mr. SIKES. I think that would be a good idea. (Discussion off the record.) Colonel SHULER. We will bring a copy this afternoon and show the committee a map of Davison Field, but I will say there is considerably more planned than a strip and control tower. Mr. FLOOD. All right. FAMILY QUARTERS Colonel SHULER. The next item, sir, at Fort Belvoir, is a request for $1,445,000 to fund new authorization for family quarters; 114 sets of noncommissioned officers' family quarters. The situation there, sir, is that the total requirement against the permanent peacetime Army is for 1,720 units. We have assets of 1,058 of which 450 are Wherry housing, leaving a deficiency of 662 or 37 percent of the total requirement. Mr. SIKES. What is the life expectancy of your Wherry housing this year, what is your educated guess? Colonel SHULER. They speak of 50-year amortization. I can show you some which I don't think will last 5 years. To my way of thinking, sir, Wherry housing tends toward the substandard Mr. FLOOD. Who spoke of 50 years, the Army when they justified the budget request or who? Colonel SHULER. No, sir; that is in the scheme of financing the Wherry housing. If you took $90 a month as the average quarters allowance and multiplied it by 50 years, it is $54,000, which is the ultimate cost for a Wherry house. That is one way of looking at it. I have lived in a Wherry house and built some, and I feel that with the $10,000 you are limited to, you cannot get a house that gives you low maintenance cost. In addition, a noncom or a junior grade officer is not able to pay rent for a 2- or 3-bedroom Wherry house; nor is it adequate in space for a senior officer. Mr. MILLER. Are the criteria the same everywhere? Colonel SHULER. No, sir; but you are under the same cost limitation, under the same scheme of financing. You can vary your design. You can build duplexes instead of singles. I am referring to some at Carlisle Barracks where I lived for a year when I attended the Army War College and my utility bill was around $45 a month, sir, in the winter time, for fuel alone, for gas alone, because of the bad insulation in the walls. That is because of lack of money to do a better job. So far as the length of time that Wherry housing will last, I don't think it will last nearly as long as a set of permanent quarters. Mr. FLOOD. What was the intention on Wherry? Was it intended to last 50 years or is that just a figure of something you reach as a result of amortization? Mr. SIKES. About the same as FHA, same general category, 25- or 30-year house. I have seen some good ones and I have seen some poor ones. Colonel SHULER. It is just a question of amortization. Mr. RILEY. I have seen some awfully good Wherry houses; I have seen some not so good, but some of the best I have seen have been in Florida. I think they meet every requirement. Colonel SHULER. If you can get a break, sir, on the cost in the area in which you are constructing and get good bids, maybe under your $10,000 you can build a suitable house, but where the costs are high, sir, and unless you get very good bids you can't get much for your $10,000. Mr. RILEY. I realize costs vary in different sections of the country but I don't think we want to condemn the whole program because you do get a few that are not up to standard. I could name some other places. GRANITE CITY ENGINEER DEPOT, ILL. Colonel SHULER. The next station, sir, in the Corps of Engineers is Granite City Engineer Depot, on page 139 in the big book, and family housing on page 334 in the small book. Mr. FLOOD. While you are on this, will you, sometime when you are running over this record, would you insert and from now on do the same thing, if there is such an incident, any time in any of these projects for which you are asking funds, are brand new installations, will you just say that it is whenever you run into one? Colonel SHULER. I can state, Mr. Flood, that there is no new, brand-new installation in this program other than in Potrero Hills, Calif. the west coast ammunition unloading facility. Mr. SIKES. Off the record. (Discussion off the record.) Colonel SHULER. There are two items at Granite City Engineer Depot beside the family housing. One is for the blocking and banding shop, $216,000, and the other is for an equipment processing shop, $904,000. BLOCKING AND BANDING SHOP The first item, blocking and banding shop is required to replace an existing structure built in 1943 which is 60 feet by 400 feet. The facility will be utilized principally to prepare items of engineer equipment for shipment by rail. These include, sir; every item in the engineer repertoire from the largest pieces of earth-moving equipment on down. The secondary use is receipt and handling of equipment. As you said, much of this equipment which is processed for this facility is large and very heavy. Mr. SIKES. What do you mean by blocking and banding? Colonel SHULER. Sir; in preparing something for shipment, when you put it on flatcars you block it so that when the freight is moving it doesn't roll around it is quite a process on a big piece of equipment. Banding is the metal or steel banding that they put around items in order to secure them for transport. Mr. SIKES. What are you going to do with existing facilities? Colonel SHULER. Due to the original structural limitations and deterioration of the load-bearing members, current operations on existing structure are seriously restricted. We cannot realize the required efficiency. The maintenance costs on this existing facility are excessive. The facility is a hazard and we are going to demolish it, sir. EQUIPMENT PROCESSING SHOP The next item, the same station, on page 141, is the equipment processing shop. This facility will be utilized for processing equipment in storage and equipment being prepared for domestic and overseas shipment in order to prevent deterioration. These operations involve inspection, assembly and disassembly, cleaning and application of preservatives. The facility will process about 800 items per month. The present facility, which is a wood frame constructed building, which is only capable of processing about 600 items per month is inadequate. Mr. SIKES. How does it happen that all of this processing for a shipment is done in midcontinental United States? Colonel SHULER. The only thing I cay say to that, Mr. Chairman, is that I believe we are down now to 2 engineer depots, 1 being Granite City, the other Marion Engineer Depot. Mr. SIKES. Wouldn't it be cheaper to have the supplying company do that before delivery? Colonel SHULER. You mean to preserve these things? Mr. SIKES. From the description here, I understood this was primarily for shipment. Colonel SHULER. This is a storage and supply depot. It has to stock these items over a period of time, as the requests come in from the ports of embarkation and various other Mr. SIKES. Why don't you have the supplying factory process equipment for shipping rather than do it yourself? Colonel SHULER. If we could have them do that and send it to the port of embarkation and directly overseas, that would probably be the thing to do, sir, but we don't feel we can operate completely that We feel we have to ship many items into a depot, classify them and sift all our requests and ship it out from there. way. Mr. SIKES. Have you explored the possibility that I suggested? Mr. FOSTER. Mr. Chairman, in those items of supply where it is possible to establish the demand level for various commands and get the phasing of the demand pinned down, that is now being done by the Army supply system. Shipments are made from supplier to the ports. The items that this building will handle are the types on which the demand is rather irregular, the lead time in their procurement is long, and they require this special handling. Mr. MILLER. Is there not also another factor that in some instances the destination affects the type of crating, shipping, and so on, and sometimes the stuff must be shipped by air? Colonel SHULER. That's right, sir. Mr. MILLER. That might be one reason, Mr. Chairman, why you couldn't bale it in advance. Mr. SIKES. All right; go ahead. FAMILY QUARTERS Colonel SHULER. The next item is 50 sets of family quarters. Mr. FLOOD. This equipment and processing shop at this base at Granite City, do you bring in damaged equipment and used equipment from the field and repair it at this engineer depot at Granite City? Is this also an Army engineer repair depot just for the Engineer Corps or for the Army? Colonel SHULER. For the Engineer Corps and for any engineer-type equipment, any units assigned other than to the Corps of Engineers. Mr. FLOOD. You bring the stuff to Belvoir or any engineer area at all and if there is anything broken or chipped or damaged can you repair it here? Is that the kind of operation it is? Mr. FOSTER. They do major repair; the engineers, as the other technical services, have field maintenance shops located in various parts of the country that do minor repair work. But major overhauls, complete rebuild, are done at depots like Granite City. Colonel SHULER. The 50 sets of family quarters, sir, are 34 noncom officers, 12 company grade, 3 field grade, and 1 general or commanding officer. $702,000. We have a 100-percent deficiency there against a 136 requirement. We have no assets. Sixty-two of these, 62 percent of this request is to replace inadequate quarters which are presently occupied on the post, sir. MARION ENGINEER DEPOT, OHIO The next station is Marion Engineer Depot, the other engineer depot. In the items for this installation, sir, the first two go together, a hardstand ($830,000) and a railroad spur ($233,000). The third item is a fence ($83,000). HARDSTAND The first item, the hardstand, is open storage area required for the storage of both serviceable and unserviceable equipment. Now, the value of this equipment that is in open storage is about $95 million. Due to the close proximity of the base maintenance this site will be used principally for storage of unserviceable equipment prior to repair and returned to stock or to the user. Its location will reduce handling costs and time to a minimum. At present, an open storm drainage ditch extends the full width of this project. By including a dual 72-inch pipe culvert, additional area will be available and maintenance of the ditch will be decreased. Trucks are presently stored in the unstabilized area and in the winter it is almost impossible to move the equipment around in the mud, sir. RAILROAD SPUR A companion item to this is the railroad spur. This track is required to serve approximately 180,000 square yards of this additional hardstand we are asking for, sir. It is needed to eliminate excessive handling. There is no existing railroad track in the site for the proposed hardstand at the present time. Mr. FLOOD. This railroad spur, is that a railroad spur or trackage within the yards of the engineer depot? Colonel SHULER. That would be to serve the hardstand which is the first item. There would be about 13,000 lineal feet of 90-pound rail track. Mr. FLOOD. There is no spur connecting with a railroad line? Colonel SHULER. We are not building to connect with the line. It would connect with a line through other trackage, but this is on the post proper. Mr. FLOOD. This particular railroad spur will not tie in with any main-line railroad; will it? Colonel SHULER. It ties in with a main line. Mr. FLOOD. Through other spurs, but is there a direct connection on the spur? Mr. FOSTER. This will go through an existing spur. It is an extension of our spur system. Mr. FLOOD. Where is the lineage? Where is the trackage on this particular spur? Mr. FOSTER. In the area colored in pink on this map [pointing]. Mr. FLOOD. Where are the existing railroad facilities, not yours, but the line? Mr. FOSTER. Here is the Erie Railroad and the New York Central. FENCE Colonel SHULER. The last item at this station, sir, is the fence, $83,000. This proposed fence is required to replace an existing emergency type fence constructed in 1942 which is only a 5-strand barbed wire fence, 4 feet high, with untreated wooden posts. The present fence does not provide any protection to speak of. Approximately 60 percent of the fence should be replaced immediately at a cost of approximately $18,000 if the present fence is to be retained. We would like to avoid spending that $18,000 and get a proper fence for the $83,000. TRANSPORTATION CORPS FACILITIES Mr. Chairman, we come to the Transportation Corps. I have here this morning Major General Yount, Chief, Transportation Corps. |