Tri-Valley CAREs

Sunday, May 28, 2006  
Livermore considers bio-defense lab in Tracy: Proposed research site m

By: Keay Davidson, Science Writer
Published In: San Francisco Chronicle
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/05/28/BAGLSJ3NVT1.DTL

TRACY

The University of California and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, which are already pushing for federal court approval to store and study dangerous microbes at the Livermore lab, have expressed interest in building a second bio-defense lab near Tracy -- a lab that could experiment with even deadlier bugs.



Critics say approval might allow such a facility to be a storehouse and research center for particularly virulent diseases such as Ebola, dengue fever, Lassa fever and other illnesses for which there are no known cures.



"To propose location of (such a potentially hazardous) facility in the San Francisco Bay Area is truly beyond comprehension, because all it would take is a single earthquake to unleash billions of deadly pathogens, for which there is no known cure, on an unsuspecting public," said Oakland attorney Stephan Volker, whose client Tri-Valley CARES of Livermore, a leading activist group and lab critic, has already sued over the first bio-defense lab -- and might take legal action over the second proposal.



UC and lab officials said this week that the second lab would focus on agricultural diseases such as foot-and-mouth, an economically catastrophic epidemic. Lawrence B. Coleman, a physicist and UC's vice provost for research, told The Chronicle that a research facility designed for that purpose would be valuable because "there are a lot of diseases that could do incredible damage to California agriculture."



But, if approved and funded by the Department of Homeland Security, the 50,000-square-foot facility near Tracy could come with a ranking of "Biosafety Level Four," a status granted in the United States only to biological labs that store and analyze the world's scariest pathogens, both human and animal -- and lab officials refused to rule out the possibility that they'll study human diseases as well.



The proposal for the second lab angered Tracy City Councilwoman Irene D. Sundberg, who noted that the city abuts Site 300 -- as the possible location for the second lab is known -- and new housing is planned nearby.



"The (UC Regents) should be putting it in their backyard and not mine," she said.



The proposal for the lab in Tracy comes just as a long-running legal dispute over the fate of another planned bio-defense lab, this one on the main Livermore campus, approaches High Noon in federal court.



The Livermore facility, which officials hope to open later this year, has a security ranking of Biosafety Level Three, a notch lower than what is being considered for Tracy.



The Level Three lab, if opened, would be authorized to study diseases including plague, botulism, anthrax and Q fever, a bacterial disease that in its more virulent form, chronic Q fever, kills up to 65 percent of its victims. Scientists there would seek ways to protect against the natural occurrence of such diseases or the use of such deadly agents by terrorists or other foes.



By contrast, researchers at the second lab would concentrate to a greater degree on natural- or terrorist-caused agricultural diseases, but might also have the authority to work on extremely virulent human diseases such as Ebola, research on which is not permitted in the lower-ranked lab.



The proposed Level Three lab in Livermore has been tied up for several years in litigation with critics who say environmental assessments of the potential hazards there have been inadequate. In September 2004, U.S. District Court Judge Saundra Armstrong in Oakland ruled in the lab's favor, but critics appealed to the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco, where oral arguments are scheduled on June 13.



Volker said he will ask the court to authorize a more extensive safety study "because (the proposed facility on the Livermore campus) threatens potentially catastrophic health and safety impacts on the San Francisco Bay Area." To try to open a bio-defense facility in Livermore poses "unconscionable hazards in a populated area such as the Bay Area."



Volker included in his court filings computer simulations by Matthew McKinzie, a scientific consultant for the Natural Resources Defense Council. They show that plumes of killer microbes could spread in many different directions across the Bay Area, perhaps as far as San Francisco or beyond, depending on wind and other weather conditions.



Both Bill Colston, spokesman for the Level Three lab, and UC's Coleman declined to discuss McKinzie's models and referred inquiries on the matter to John Belluardo, Livermore lab spokesman. Belluardo said lab officials won't address "specific safety concerns" because the case involving the Level Three facility "is presently involved in litigation."



UC officials expressed interest in the possibility of constructing the Tracy facility in a March 31 letter to Homeland Security. In January, the federal department requested feelers from around the nation in a posting on the Federal Register. Formal requests will come later.



UC officials refused to release copies, explaining their letter is "confidential and proprietary" and releasing it might leak secrets to potential competitors for the project.



Coleman said having labs in a populated region like the Bay Area makes sense. "If you want to have the very best researchers working on these diseases in defense of the country, you have to put it somewhere where it'll attract them," he said.



In any case, he added, "we have the technology to make (the research) extremely safe."



Livermore lab officials also agree that both bio-defense labs would be safe.



"Lawrence Livermore has a long history of safely and securely working with biological agents," Colston said. "There are hundreds of these facilities in the United States with proven track records."



Asked if the lab had ever had bio-accidents, he replied: "No, not that I know of."



However, Volker and Marylia Kelley of Tri-Valley CARES gave The Chronicle copies of documents involving the alleged mishandling of biological materials at Livermore lab. One document, submitted to the appellate court, records a 1999 incident in which a lab worker "was mistakenly conducting experiments with a virulent strain of Bacillus anthracis," or anthrax, and, according to an internal report by lab investigators, "mistakenly disposed of contaminated equipment and utensils in the trash."



Critics have questioned Lawrence Livermore lab's safety and security for decades, and recently gained a powerful ally: Linton Brooks, head of the National Nuclear Security Administration, which oversees Livermore on behalf of the Energy Department. Livermore lab suffers from "long-standing radiological protection program, quality assurance, and safety basis deficiencies," Brooks charged in a Feb. 23 letter to then-Livermore director Michael Anastasio.

CLOUDS OF

KILLER MICROBES?



Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory is under fire from critics for plans to open two labs in the region ? in Livermore and in Tracy ? to research dangerous microbes. Lab officials say the labs would be safe, but critics fear either lab could accidentally unleash billions of dangerous disease-causing pathogens into the air.



The diagram shows hypothetical releases of deadly anthrax spores. Computer scenarios performed by Matthew McKinzie, a nuclear physicist who is a consultant to the Natural Resources Defense Council, show the different paths of spore clouds dependent on wind direction.



1. Based on wind directions typical in September, the result would be a long, thin trail to the southeast that could expose 1,100 people.



2. A boomerang-shaped trail would be likely to form in February, exposing 128,000 people.



3. When winds blow east to west, a cone-shaped trail would pass over San Francisco, exposing more than a half-million people.



Source: ESRI, TeleAtlas



E-mail Keay Davidson at [email protected].



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