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As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe NowThe Indiana Department of Natural Resources hopes to re-create what western Indiana's Vermillion County looked like before being settled on part of the former Newport Chemical Depot.
IDNR ecologist Thomas Swinford told the Terre Haute Tribune-Star that the site will include nearly 2,200 acres of protected habitat for Indiana bats and a 1,700-acre nature zone recreating prairie conditions.
Conservationists have opposed some aspects of the site's redevelopment plan. They have said planned industrial development will destroy all but about 44 acres of the state's largest restored black-soil tallgrass prairie.
The Pentagon designated the 7,100-acre depot about 25 miles north of Terre Haute for closure in 2005. Destruction of the deadly VX nerve agent stored there finished in 2008.
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