RICHMOND - The federal government has halted design work on a chemical neutralization plant in Pueblo, Colo., a move that could delay the destruction of chemical weapons at the Blue Grass Army Depot for years.

The cause of the problem is the war in Iraq, said Col. Martin Jacoby, commander of the Blue Grass Army Depot.

"The Army ran out of money this year," Jacoby told members of a citizen's advisory board in Madison County yesterday. The demilitarization program's big price tag makes it an obvious place to look for funds.

Members of the advisory board said they would write to members of Congress in Kentucky and other affected states in an effort to protect the program's funding.

Craig Williams, executive director of the Berea-based Chemical Weapons Working Group and co-chairman of the advisory board, said it was "unacceptable" to divert resources to look for weapons of mass destruction halfway around the world while chemical arms posed a threat to Americans in their own neighborhoods.

The Army stores 523 tons of decaying blister and nerve agent at the depot a few miles southeast of downtown Richmond. The stockpile is scheduled to be destroyed just before an international treaty's deadline in 2012, but Williams said he has been told the budget problems could mean a delay of four to five years.

The Pentagon has asked the agency overseeing the programs in Colorado and Kentucky, Assembled Chemical Weapons Alternatives,--to analyze ways to cut costs.

Worries about the program's budget are not new. In February, Pueblo's funding for this fiscal year was cut from $151.7 million to about $5 million. About $50 million of that cut was restored in negotiations with Congress.

The $2 billion chemical neutralization plant being planned in Madison County will share much of Pueblo's design and technology, so cuts there will eventually be felt here.

Pueblo's design is about 60 percent complete, and the design in Madison is 30 percent complete.

For now, the budget problem shouldn't have any major impact on Madison, said Chris Midgett, project manager for the contractor, Bechtel Parsons Blue Grass. And he said the chemical weapons will still be neutralized -- it's just a question of when.