M55 rockets containing VX nerve agent are stored in an earth-covered bunker called an igloo at Blue Grass Army Depot near Richmond, Ky. This photo was taken during a 2001 media tour of the facility. (Pablo Alcala, Lexington Herald-Leader/TNS)
(Tribune News Service) — Their mission nearly accomplished, government contractors have begun layoffs at a Central Kentucky plant where 523 tons of chemical weapons were destroyed.
The Blue Grass Chemical Agent-Destruction Pilot Plant in Madison County is in the “closure phase,” said Mark York, communications manager for Bechtel Parsons Blue Grass, the joint venture that built and operates the plant.
Since work to destroy the World War II-era chemical weapons housed at the Blue Grass Army Depot began more than five years ago, “every day we’ve been working ourselves out of a job,” York said in an interview Saturday. “It was never designed to be a continuing operation.”
The last weapon in the nation’s chemical weapons stockpile was destroyed at the Richmond facility in July 2023.
York said five contractors have worked together to destroy the stockpile: Bechtel National, Parsons Corp., Amentum, GP Strategies and Battelle Memorial Institute.
Four of those companies have filed notices of impending layoffs under the federal Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification, or WARN Act.
At its peak, 1,500 people worked at the plant, and staffing currently stands at 1,179 people distributed across multiple companies, York said. About half of them are from Madison and surrounding counties.
“Each company is responsible for issuing WARN notices to their employees,” he said. The first notices were issued during the last quarter of 2024.
WARN notices sent to plant contractors
The most recent notice was filed by Battelle Memorial Institute, which York said operates the plant’s lab and monitors for chemical agents.
In a WARN notice on Feb. 21, Battelle said its 245 employees would have their positions eliminated over a 14-day period beginning April 24.
Amentum, which provided equipment and testing for the rocket warhead containment system, said in a WARN notice filed on Jan. 27 that it will lay off 90 employees on March 27.
Parsons Corp. expects to lay off its employees through a “gradual reduction of the workforce” over a two-year period, the company said in a WARN notice on Jan. 22. Effective Jan. 16, 11 employees were to be laid off.
York said a total workforce planning office is providing resources to employees to help with the transition to other jobs.
“We’ve held multiple job fairs,” and offered classes on topics such as interviewing and resume writing skills, York said. He said there have been opportunities for additional training as well.
Destruction of chemical weapons in Central Kentucky has reached a new milestone
What will become of the chemical weapons plant?
While the workforce is decreasing, there is still work being done at the plant.
Thousands of drained rocket warheads that once held GB and VX nerve agents still have to be destroyed.
York said about 72% of more than 51,000 now-empty warheads that previously contained GB nerve agent, or sarin, have been destroyed so far.
About 60% of the more than 17,000 now-empty warheads that contained VX nerve agent have been destroyed.
And any part of the plant where a chemical agent has been will have to be “decontaminated, decommissioned and demolished,” York said.
The work of shutting the plant down is expected to be completed in 2027.
A number of possible future uses for the site have been suggested.
York said any future use of the facilities is up to the Department of Defense and the state of Kentucky.
There’s “no potential future use for any of those parts of the plant where we were actively destroying weapons,” York said, though he said there are other parts of the facility, such as an electrical substation, that could be repurposed if the government chose to do so.
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