RICHMOND, Ky. – The U.S. has destroyed 90 percent of its chemical weapons – but thousands of aging rockets, laced with deadly nerve agents, remain in storage near Richmond.

The Blue Grass Army Depot holds 523 tons of chemical agent, and will be the last of the country's nine storage sites to destroy its stockpile.

The Chemical Weapons Convention, a 1997 treaty entered into by 190 countries, outlaws the use, production and stockpiling of these lethal weapons.

Craig Williams has been a citizens' watchdog in Kentucky since the early 1980s.

"Once we're done, the United States has fulfilled its international obligations,” he says. “And so, obviously the spotlight is on us as to, 'When are you going to get done? Do you have the funding to complete it? Do you have the workforce to complete it?'"

Other than Kentucky, Colorado has the other remaining stockpile, which is scheduled to complete disposal by 2020. The job will take longer here in Kentucky.

Site project manager Jeff Brubaker says work on the Blue Grass Chemical Agent Destruction Pilot Plant will be finished next year, but testing the complex systems will take through 2018. Then, he says he's hopeful disposal will finally begin on the weapons filled with GB and VX nerve agent.

"We're only going to proceed when we're confident that we're going to be successful and we will safely operate the facility," he states.

The target date for closing the plant is 2023. Brubaker says the cost of the Kentucky project, from design to closure, is an estimated $5.3 billion.

Craig Williams says the U.S. will spend close to $40 billion to get rid of its entire stockpile, much more than the military's original estimate in 1985 of $1.8 billion.

Williams says Kentucky is last, in large part, because the Pentagon originally wanted to burn the chemical weapons at Blue Grass. That triggered a public backlash, but conflict eventually turned to cooperation and consensus.

"It's unfortunate that it's taken so long, but there was 15 years of foot-dragging by the Pentagon that created this situation,” he says. “But, here we are now. I feel safe with the technology and with the personnel that are in charge of safely storing the material until it's time to start disposing of it."

The U.S. is one of five treaty signers that hasn't completely destroyed its stockpiles. The others are Russia, Iraq, Libya and Syria. And six countries, including North Korea, Egypt and Israel, are not party to the treaty.





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The Trump administration's long-term plan for artificial intelligence could have far-reaching environmental impacts across the country.

His strategy calls for the removal of land use rules considered prohibitive to the construction of AI data centers. Last year, then Gov. Eric Holcomb announced Microsoft would invest $1 billion to establish a new AI data center in Laporte to generate cloud computing infrastructure.

Ben Murray, senior researcher for the advocacy group Food and Water Watch, said fossil fuel plants are already being reopened to help meet high energy demands.

"We just need to be aware that anything that prolongs our reliance on fossil fuel is going to increase the problems that we're seeing from the climate crisis," Murray explained.

Murray argued high-tech progress should not come at the expense of increased household energy prices. Residents' support is low due to concerns about increased traffic and noise near the centers. The Trump administration said environmental and permitting regulations will only slow America's dominance in the AI field.

A report last year found emissions from data centers owned by Apple, Google, Meta and Microsoft were more than seven times higher than officially reported. Computer servers using AI require far more energy than those without. A ChatGPT query, for example, can use up to 10 times more electricity than a standard Google search.

"These companies can seem as if they're decreasing their emissions and meeting net-zero goals but in reality, the emissions are amping up faster than ever for these companies," Murray pointed out.

Murray noted the push for more data centers is already leading Big Tech companies to backtrack on their climate goals. It is possible to power AI services with renewable energy sources, he added, but doing so requires political will.

As of June 2025, a 1,200-acre corn and soybean field just outside of New Carlisle has turned into eight Amazon-led AI energy centers. The tech giant plans to construct a total of 30 at the site.


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After one year, Washington's first comprehensive bee survey has documented 15 species that have never been collected in the state before.

The project is cataloguing native bees, which includes nearly all species in the state, but excludes honeybees.

Karla Salp is a communications consultant with the Washington State Department of Agriculture's Washington Bee Atlas program, which conducted the survey.

She said the data will serve as a baseline to track bee populations.

"The reason why this is happening in the first place is to answer the question, how are pollinators doing in Washington state?" said Salp. "And the answer is we don't know, because we've never actually looked at even what bees we have throughout the state."

Salp said the project also involves compiling a list of plants that each bee species pollinates so residents can make their yards more attractive to these beneficial insects.

As honeybee numbers continue to decline rapidly, Salp explained that native pollinators may become more important to Washington's agriculture.

"Knowing what native pollinators we have and how we can support them is really a sustainability issue" said Salp, "to make sure that whether we have honeybees here or not, there are options for pollination."

Volunteers collected over 17,000 bees on more than 600 different host plants.

Salp said the process of identifying them is slow because each one must be viewed under a microscope, and there is still considerable work to be done.

"We're expecting to find a lot more species" said Salp, "that are either rare or even new to the state. "

If people are interested in volunteering, an online application for the Bee Atlas program is available on the Washington State Department of Agriculture website.




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The Trump administration wants to overturn a conservation rule that had garnered more public comment than any in U.S. history up until that time.

Commonly known as the Roadless Rule, the U.S. Department of Agriculture regulation prohibits road construction, reconstruction, and timber harvesting on nearly 60 million acres of national forest land.

Sarah McMillan - the senior attorney and director of the Wildlands & Wildlife Program at the Western Environmental Law Center - said before it was adopted in 2001, 1.5 million people submitted comments, with the vast majority in support of the rule.

"This was a rule that was carefully, thoughtfully developed," said McMillan. "There was a long process of inventorying these roadless areas and identifying these remote, often mature and old-growth trees. This didn't happen overnight."

A rollback of the rule would allow more logging and drilling on federal lands, which McMillan said would worsen climate change, harm wildlife & vital ecosystems, jeopardize water quality, and negatively affect recreational opportunities.

The Bush administration attempted to repeal the Roadless Rule in 2005, but lost in the courts.

In announcing the proposed rollback, U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins claimed more logging would improve forest management, which would in turn decrease forest fires.

But McMillan said that argument is disputed in a 2020 Wilderness Society study that found just the opposite.

"The truth is, un-roaded areas burn at a significantly lower rate than areas with roads," said McMillan. "So, fires start near roads."

McMillan said it doesn't make sense to allow private developers to log more trees when the planet is undergoing a biodiversity and climate crisis - especially because old-growth trees create a buffer against climate change.

Forests cover almost 30% of New Mexico's land area.




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