Illustrative: the new acetic acid facility at Holston Army Ammunition Plant, Kingsport, Tennessee, 18 November 2025. Acid recovery is part of the same process utility modernisation sequence as the river water intake; this is not the intake project. U.S. Army photo by Dori Whipple, Holston Army Ammunition Plant, via DVIDS. Public domain. Use does not imply endorsement by the U.S. Department of Defense.

A 141 million dollar water intake at Kingsport is an energetics story, not a plumbing story

On 1 September 2026 the US Army Corps of Engineers awarded Garney Federal a 141,268,687 dollar fixed price contract for a river water intake and pump house at Kingsport, Tennessee, funded from fiscal 2025 Army ammunition procurement. Kingsport hosts Holston Army Ammunition Plant, the sole United States producer of RDX and HMX. Completion is set for 29 January 2029.

Technical Summary

The Department of War contract announcement of 1 September 2026 records a 141,268,687 dollar firm fixed price award to Garney Federal Incorporated of Kansas City, Missouri, for construction of a new river water intake and pump house facility. Work is at Kingsport, Tennessee, with an estimated completion date of 29 January 2029. Fiscal 2025 ammunition procurement, Army funds of 141,268,687 dollars were obligated at the time of award. Bids were solicited via the internet and one was received. The contracting activity is the United States Army Corps of Engineers, Norfolk, Virginia, under contract W91236-26-C-A015.

The announcement names no installation, but the pre award record does. The Norfolk District presolicitation of 9 September 2025, notice W9123625RA009, is titled New Water Intake Facility at HSAAP and states that the Corps intends to solicit construction of the New Water Intake Facility and Pump Station at Holston Army Ammunition Plant, unrestricted full and open competition, Design Bid Build, Best Value Trade Off under FAR 15.101, one firm fixed price award, place of performance Kingsport, Tennessee 37660. The installation is therefore documented rather than inferred; it is only the awards page that omits it.

Holston Army Ammunition Plant (HSAAP) is a government owned, contractor operated facility sited on the Holston River and the sole United States producer of RDX, cyclotrimethylenetrinitramine, and HMX, cyclotetramethylenetetranitramine. Nitration and recrystallisation of both nitramines are water intensive processes, and the plant's acid recovery chain, described by the Army in April 2024, separates weak acetic acid from RDX, HMX, ammonium nitrate solution and water before concentrating it to approximately 55 percent by weight.

Fiscal 2025 ammunition procurement, Army funds of 141,268,687 dollars were obligated at the time of award for a river water intake and pump house at Kingsport, Tennessee. Bids were solicited via the internet and one was received. Department of War contract announcement, 1 September 2026

Analysis of Effects

Process utilities are where an explosives plant actually fails. A nitration line is limited by whichever of acid supply, steam, cooling water and effluent handling runs out first, and at Holston several of those utilities date from 1943. The Army has been replacing them in sequence under a fifteen year organic industrial base modernisation plan. A natural gas fired steam plant completed in 2021, its boilers rated at 250,000 pounds of steam per hour against a maximum effective output of one million pounds per hour. Two additional fluid energy mill production trains were added to grind RDX to specified nominal particle diameter, taking the site to a stated capability of roughly four million pounds of material at any one time. A two train replacement for the 1943 weak acetic acid recovery plant is in hand. A river water intake and pump house belongs to that same sequence.

On this project the Army has already said what the intake is for, and it is not a like for like swap. The purpose recorded in the March 2023 draft Environmental Assessment is to build a new intake structure and pump house in Area B to meet Rule 316(b) requirements while providing adequate capacity for water intake at full RDX and HMX production capacity. The stated need is blunter still: the existing intake does not meet Rule 316(b), cannot accommodate projected river water demands, and cannot be upgraded to meet regulatory requirements while production is occurring. Two things follow. Capacity at full production is an explicit design objective, so this is not merely a resilience project. And the regulatory driver is why a second intake is being built rather than the old one rebuilt in place, because bringing the existing structure into compliance would mean stopping production to do it. Section 316(b) of the Clean Water Act governs cooling water intake structures and turns on impingement and entrainment of aquatic organisms, which is a screen and approach velocity problem rather than a question of how much water the river can yield.

What still limits the reading is throughput. The announcement gives no design flow rate and does not say which production lines the intake serves, and enabling capacity is not the same as producing it. What can be said is the size of the commitment. This is 141.3 million dollars drawn from ammunition procurement rather than military construction, obligated in full at award, on a site whose output feeds every American energetic fill that uses RDX or HMX. That includes the polymer bonded explosive formulations used across bomb, warhead and some rocket motor applications, and it is why Holston is repeatedly identified in open analysis as a single point of failure in the munitions industrial base.

Personnel and Safety Considerations

Utility modernisation on a live explosives site is itself an explosives safety problem. Construction inside or adjacent to an operating explosives area brings non explosives workers, plant and vehicles inside quantity distance arcs calculated for the resident Net Explosive Quantity, and the controlling authority has to decide whether to accept that exposure, barricade it, reduce holdings or interrupt production while the work proceeds. Under the American regime in DESR 6055.09, and under AASTP-1 Edition D Version 1 for NATO nations, a construction workforce counts as an exposed site in its own right and is assessed as one. Nothing in the announcement indicates how the question was resolved at Kingsport, and it is entirely possible the intake sits far enough from any potential explosion site that it does not arise.

Data Gaps

Open sources do not state the as awarded design flow rate; which production lines are tied to the new pump house and which stay on the legacy intake through cutover; whether the construction footprint falls inside an explosives area and what quantity distance implications follow; why a single bid was received against an unrestricted full and open solicitation, and how the evaluated price compared with the government estimate; and whether the award is booked against a named line in the ammunition plant modernisation plan submitted to Congress or sits as a separate project funded from the same procurement pot. The awards announcement itself carries none of this, but the pre award record is not silent: the 2025 presolicitation and the 2023 environmental assessment both describe this facility.

Editorial responsibility. This analysis is researched, written and published under the editorial responsibility of Steve Sawyers, MIExpE VR. Every technical claim is sourced to named open-source material and rated for reliability and accuracy under NATO STANAG 2022. ISC uses its own domain-trained research and drafting system under human direction; the analysis, the judgements and the accountability for them are ours. Corrections and updates welcome: if you hold open-source data that refines or corrects any parameter here, write to [email protected] citing the specific claim and your source. Verified corrections are incorporated and credited in the revision history. Full editorial and AI policy.