Action News 36 was granted clearance recently by the Army to view the construction site where a plant will be built to destroy 523 tons of chemical weapons.  Photographer Steve Kaufmann and myself were given a tour of the high-security area inside the gates of the Blue Grass Army Depot.  Several guards continually circle the chemical limited area.  That's where thousands of rockets and projectiles, which are aging, obsolete and filled with either nerve agent or mustard gas, are stored in earthen igloos.  Under post 9-11 rules we were not allowed to go inside that area or video that compound. 

The 35 acre site where the destruction plant will be built is adjacent to the chemical limited area.  Today it looks like a huge parking lot or the start of a huge strip mall - perfectly flat, covered with finely crushed stone.  The prep work has been below ground, where the Army's private contractor has gone as much as 18 feet below the surface, to bedrock, to make the site earthquake proof.  "This was all done for the seismic concern of the building," explained area superintendent Gene Rhodes.  "They want to make from the bedrock all the way up to the building to be one."

The high tech factory complex where the chemical weapons will be destroyed will include 15 to 20 buildings, many  vapor and explosion proof.  The weapons will be disassembled, the agent neutralized and the metal parts decontaminated.  Work on the actual buildings won't begin until next spring with foundation work.  If the current time schedule holds, and that depends on congressional funding, actual destruction of the chemical weapons could begin by mid 2012.  The Army first proposed getting rid of the stockpile in the early 1980's but the public fought the original plan to  burn the weapons.

Most of the active work we saw at the destruction site was on the access road that runs for more than a mile to the demilitarization site.  Years from now, when the plant is at peak oepration, as many as 800 people will work in it.