ROMULUS - After an eight-year absence, the Army could soon return to the former Seneca Army Depot in upstate New York to train troops.

Officials at the U.S. Army's Fort Drum in northern New York are finalizing a lease with Seneca County officials to use about 3,000 acres of the 10,600-acre former weapons storage and disposal facility.

Currently, county and military officials are accepting public comment on the Army's request until June 29, said Patricia Jones, executive director of the Seneca County Economic Development Corp., which has approved the plan. An environmental assessment determined there would no significant impact from the Army's use of the depot, she said.

“It's not exactly an economic development project but it will be nice having the soldiers on the depot again,” said Jones, who worked as a civilian at the depot before she became the county's base reuse coordinator.

Tucked between Cayuga and Seneca lakes in upstate New York's Finger Lakes region, the 10,587-acre army depot opened in 1941. For more than 50 years, the depot was used to store and dispose of military explosives, including nuclear bomb materials. It ceased most operations in 1993 and officially closed in 2000.

The depot is now home to a state maximum-security prison, a residential center for troubled youth, the county's jail and its law enforcement training center as well as other light industry and business.

Lt. Col. John Penree, senior planning and operations officer at Fort Drum, said the 10th Mountain Division has asked to use the depot for training up to 1,500 soldiers in two- to 21-day sessions as many as 10 times a year. Penree said state officials first contacted the Army in October 2004 about using the depot for training.

The training area will be in the depot's 7,000-acre conservation area and include the depot's former airfield, a large portion of the bunker area and warehouse space.

Only wheeled vehicles will be used at the depot. No heavy equipment or tracked vehicles will be used, he said. Training will include weapon exercises using blanks and the use of helicopters and vehicle convoys to ferry soldiers the 100 miles between Fort Drum and depot, Penree said.

Fort Drum - which sprawls over more than 107,000 acres - has about 50,000 acres for training its soldiers. However, Fort Drum also is used annually for training by about 80,000 National Guardsmen in units from across the Northeast.

The additional training area provides the Army with more planning flexibility, Penree said.

“It gets very busy here in the summer,” he said.

Penree said there would be no cost to the Army to lease the land. The Army, however, will share maintenance costs and will repair any damage caused by the training operations.

Penree said the Army would work with county and business officials to minimize the impact of training. There will be no training during the deer hunting season in the fall, he said.

The Seneca Army Depot is famous as the home of the world's largest herd of rare white deer, which have lived within the fenced-in depot for more than a half-century.

Seneca White Deer, an organization fighting to save the herd's habitat and turn a portion of the depot into a nature preserve, supports the Army plan because it would limit other uses of the depot, said group spokesman Dennis Money.

“The Army's track record in helping manage the wildlife over six decades within the fenced area of the depot speaks for itself,” Money said in an e-mail. “They were good stewards of the natural resources within the depot. However, they must continue to be responsible in their proposed new training proposal.”