Economic development leaders hope to sell companies on former home of deadly chemical weapons

By HAYLEIGH COLOMBO  Journal & Courier

NEWPORT, Indiana — When Bill Laubernds tours the 7,000-acre Newport Chemical Depot — complete with abandoned structures, old cemeteries and derelict signs of the country's chemical history of producing chemical weapons — he doesn't see an old chemical plant site. He sees potential.

Laubernds, executive director of the Newport Chemical Depot Reuse Authority, has since 2009 been trying to build a new future at the Newport site, complete with businesses, industrial investment and natural, open space in the confines of the fenced-in expanse that used to house part of the country's chemical weapons stockpile.

The last truck filled with VX left the depot in 2008.

You can truck the chemical weapons away, but can you ever really separate the depot from the weapons? More here.