Kentucky among at least nine states bidding on bioterror lab
Louisville Courier-Journal
Kentucky is among at least nine states bidding for a proposed $450 million bioterrorism lab, a 500,000-square-foot facility at which scientists would study potential bioterrorism threats to the U.S. food supply and humans.
Along with Kentucky, which wants to put the center in rural Pulaski County, Alabama, Georgia, North Carolina, Florida, Mississippi, Missouri, Kansas, Arkansas and Texas filed proposals with The Department of Homeland Security by Friday's deadline.
Larry Orluskie, spokesman for DHS, said the more proposals may be added in the coming weeks as mail passes through a screening facility and is received. A short list of finalists will be announced in the fall, then environmental assessments will take place next year, Orluskie said.
"I would assume that almost everyone is responding to this," said Art Norris, a former official of the National Center for Toxicological Research, who helped with a proposal to put the new bioterrorism lab next to that facility in Pine Bluff, Ark.
Each of the groups that submitted proposals so far are associated with universities, with many including partnerships with government agencies, research facilities and companies with an interest in life-sciences research.
"Everyone is trying to assemble that kind of expertise," said Keith Nichols, spokesman for North Carolina State University, the lead party in a group trying to get the lab that includes Duke University and the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.
Kentucky officials said the competition isn't surprising, given the number of jobs that would be created and the estimated $74,000 average salary for employees at the facility.
"We knew that once the competition started, it would not be small potatoes," said Ewell Balltrip, executive director of The National Institute for Hometown Security, which has its office in Somerset.
Balltrip is the administrative manager for the consortium of Kentucky and Tennessee officials that is trying to bring the lab to Kentucky. It includes the universities of Kentucky, Tennessee and Louisville and the Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
While Kentucky has the security institute, others are banking on similar connections to lure the lab. Texas A&M University has the National Center for Foreign Animal and Zoonotic Disease Defense program, which researches issues similar to those that could be studied at the proposed new federal lab.
A Georgia group is pinning part of its bid on Atlanta being home to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which draws in top scientists and operates a lab that has the same high-level security the proposed bioterrorism facility would use.
Homeland Security officials said research capabilities, which include the proximity of the sites to existing medical, veterinary and agricultural research facilities, an able work force, and the local labor pool and site issues such as the available land, and proximity to international airports will be factors in choosing a site for the lab.
In Kentucky, opposition to the lab has been public, with some Pulaski County residents voicing concerns about the potential for leaks from the lab or the area becoming a terrorist target. Opponents collected 2,800 names on a petition against bringing the lab to Kentucky.
Officials with the Kentucky-Tennessee consortium, however, have said the lab would not pose a danger to people, animals or the environment because it would use exacting, high-tech
Opponents of the Kentucky proposal, though, may not have to worry, said Edward Hammond, director of the U.S. office of a watchdog effort called the Sunshine Project, which works to publicize bioweapons issues. Hammond said the Kentucky-Tennessee bid is probably "second-tier."
Balltrip, the Kentucky-Tennessee group "clearly made the case in a very strong way" that it can meet the requirements for the project.
Hammond said he had a sense that choosing the lab site "is gonna be a total pork horse-trading exercise. Maybe the merits won't matter as much as who scratches what back."
U.S. Rep. Hal Rogers, a Republican from Somerset, serves as chairman of the House budget subcommittee that oversees funding for Homeland Security.
Rogers said, while he thinks the Kentucky-Tennessee bid is strong, his position will have no influence on where the lab is built. That, Rogers said, will be on the merits of the proposals.
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