With funding cuts for a chemical weapons demilitarization facility at Blue Grass Army Depot making national news, Rep. Ben Chandler, D-6th District, hopes to take what he learned during a visit Friday back to Washington as Congress examines the president's proposed budget.

"That is a very important facility for Madison County and Estill County and all of the surrounding area in terms of employment," Chandler said.

"It's important that we do everything we can do to maintain that facility and strengthen the facility and maintain that employment," he said. The depot has about 1,500 employees and was a $100 million operation last year.

Chandler spent about an hour hearing a command briefing from Lt. Col. George Shuplinkov, commander of Blue Grass Chemical Activity, the agency in charge of storing and monitoring chemical weapons at the depot, before touring the facility.

"It was a good familiarization for (Chandler) to understand my current mission and where we are right now with how events are lining up," Shuplinkov said.

"We were able to provide him facts straight from the horse's mouth - facts on what's going on in the program," Shuplinkov said. "Once he knows what the facts are, he can make sound decisions."

Bechtel Parsons Blue Grass, the contractor hired to design the $2 billion facility, is fully funded to complete the design of the chemical neutralization facility, Shuplinkov said.

But preliminary construction for the facility was halted last month before President Bush released his proposed budget that severely cut funding for the program overseeing the project.

"The issue that has come up, which is rather disturbing and is a great concern, is the possibility that the government will, in my view, renege on its commitment," Chandler said.

"This budget process will last throughout this year and hopefully we can do something to restore the funding that the Bush administration has cut," he said. "But you can see that it's already had an effect. They have stopped the process, stopped it in its tracks, just based on this budget proposal that Bush put out."

The Army confirmed last month that it is studying, among other options, transporting the 525 tons of weapons to an incinerator in another state to meet an international treaty deadline of April 2012 for destruction of the country's aging chemical weapons stockpile.

"This fight should have ended. We thought it had ended," Chandler said. "The decision had already been made about not transporting these weapons. The decision had been made to dispose of them on-site and that the facility would be built to do so. Now there is some danger of reneging on that decision entirely.

"The sense of the community and the sense of the leadership here is that it is a decision that had already been made," he said. "To revisit is unacceptable."

Col. Martin Jacoby, depot commander, also took the opportunity to share some of the issues faced by the depot at-large, including funding cuts for modernization projects that could help keep the depot competitive with other federal and private facilities.

"It's always a good thing when he actually comes out and sees what we're doing," Jacoby said. "When issues come up in the future, he can say 'I've been there. I've seen that. I know what you're talking about.'

"Anything we can do to give him information or to make him smarter about the issues is good for us and it's good for the citizens here," Jacoby said. "They want him to represent them well, and we just want to give him all the data that he needs to make informed decisions."

Ryan Garrett can be reached at rgarrett@richmondregister.com or at 623-1669, Ext. 234.