RICHMOND - This week, the agencies that will carry out the destruction of chemical weapons at Blue Grass Army Depot will give the public a look at what they are up to.

A public hearing Thursday is part of the process of obtaining a permit from the Kentucky Department of Environmental Protection to build and operate the plant where the weapons will be destroyed.

The two-hour session at Eastern Kentucky University will bring people up to date on the $2 billion project, explain the permitting and neutralization processes and give the public a chance to make comments, said officials at Bechtel Parsons Blue Grass.

Bechtel Parsons was selected last June to design, build and eventually close the plant where the 523 tons of nerve and blister agent will be chemically neutralized.

The facility will be built near where the weapons are stored at the depot, which is southeast of Richmond.

Any valid concerns raised at the meeting can be incorporated into the permit document, which is to be submitted to the state in March, said Kevin Regan of Bechtel Parsons.

The depot is the smallest of eight chemical weapons storage sites in the continental United States. It guards about 2 percent of the original stockpile.

Under an international treaty, the United States is supposed to have its chemical weapons destroyed by April 2012.

In Richmond, construction of the neutralization plant will take about three years and is expected to begin in 2005.

There will be other opportunities for public input as the process goes forward, in addition to Thursday's meeting.

Recently, Kentucky Sens. Jim Bunning and Mitch McConnell fended off an effort within the Pentagon to shift some of the funding away from neutralization efforts at the depot and its sister site in Pueblo, Colo., said Craig Williams, executive director of the Berea-based Chemical Weapons Working Group.

The money would have been used for cost overruns and other problems at sites incinerating their stockpiles, said Williams, whose organization opposes burning the weapons.

Officials hope to speed up the destruction process in Madison County by at least a year by taking on some of the bureaucratic requirements simultaneously instead of in sequence, Williams said.

That will save money in the long run but require more spending now -- and the Pentagon shift would have jeopardized that, he said.