RICHMOND - City commissioners sent a message to the Pentagon last night: Keep your chemical weapons off our streets.

They unanimously approved on first reading an ordinance that would ban the transport of nerve or blister agents within the city limits.

The measure is aimed at the 523 tons of lethal, aging chemical weapons stored at Blue Grass Army Depot. Plans had called for them to be chemically neutralized at a $2 billion plant to be built at the depot. But the Pentagon, facing tight budgets because of action in Iraq and Afghan-istan, directed that other disposal methods be studied.

One of those alternatives would be to ship the weapons to Utah or Alabama to be incinerated.

So Richmond, which stands between the depot and Interstate 75, is moving to keep the weapons off its roads and rail lines. The commission will have to vote again on the ordinance.

City Attorney Garrett Fowles told the commission that, although the law probably can't be enforced, it is "highly valuable as a symbolic gesture."

Police Chief Robert Steph-ens acknowledged after the vote that it would be "hard for my officers to stop an Army truck."

"We do what the government tells us to do," he said.

But commissioners were eager to tell the Pentagon that they vehemently oppose plans to cut funding for the neutralization plant.

Federal law bars transports of chemical weapons from state to state. And the Army decided in 1988 that it was safer to dispose of the weapons on site than to ship them anywhere.

Safer, but perhaps not cheaper. The cost of transporting and then destroying the weapons is not yet clear.

The Army announced this month that it would do a feasibility study on transporting chemical weapons.

But in a news release yesterday, two senators from Colorado said they planned to co-sponsor legislation that would stop the Department of Defense from spending money on feasibility study for transporting chemical weapons from Pueblo, Colo., out of that state.

Republican Sen. Wayne Allard and Democratic Sen. Ken Salazar said they would introduce the legislation today.