Tri-Valley CAREs

Thursday, August 10, 2006  
Biodefense lab plan survives short list

By: Keay Davidson, Science Writer
Published In: SF Chronicle
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/08/10/BAGLVKEOCO1.DTL

LIVERMORE---

Plans for a controversial second biodefense laboratory at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory moved closer to realization Wednesday, when the U.S. Department of Homeland Security announced it was putting the proposal on a short list of candidate sites.



At the lab proposed for a facility near Tracy on Livermore lab property known as Site 300, researchers would expose cattle and other animals to some of the world's deadliest diseases and then try to develop defenses against such lethal microorganisms, whether unleashed by terrorists or Mother Nature.



With Wednesday's announcement, Homeland Security officials whittled the number of candidate sites from 29 to 18. A single winner will be chosen from that group, possibly as early as 2008. The 300-employee facility could open for business by 2013.



The National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility, as it will be called, would be "the size of a large Wal-Mart," said Livermore spokesperson Susan Houghton.



Livermore became a candidate in March when the University of California president's office filed an application for it.



"The need for this (lab) is, I think, huge," said Bill Colston, a biomedical engineer who is division leader for chemical and biological countermeasures at Livermore lab. "If we were to have a foot-and-mouth outbreak in this country, it'd be much worse than what they had in the United Kingdom (in 2001). The U.K. is an island -- and how much more square footage does the U.S. have?"



Colston said all animals infected in the lab experiments would be kept indoors, away from open air. The lab would be "boxes inside of boxes ... multiple layers of containment," he said.



Laboratory critics question the need for building the research lab in a populated region between the Bay Area and the Central Valley, where, they fear, killer bugs could escape from the lab and wreak havoc on farms and cattle lands.



The proposed lab is part of a building boom of biodefense facilities funded by the federal government, and the risk is that the boom could lead to willy-nilly construction of sites that aren't all necessarily in the best or safest locations, said Marylia Kelley of Tri-Valley Communities Against a Radioactive Environment.



"Tri-Valley CARES is not opposed to biodefense research," Kelley said. Rather, "we believe that the first thing this nation should do is to undertake a detailed analysis of what new biodefense capabilities are needed.



"No one is doing any planning, no one is looking at what's needed, no one is looking at the big picture."



Kelley's group has sued Livermore over its plans to open another biodefense lab on the main lab campus in Livermore. That lab would be technically known as a Biosafety Level Three lab, which federal law authorizes to deal with pathogens up to a specified level of deadliness.



As a court hearing in June in San Francisco, Chief Judge Mary Schroeder of the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals hinted of concern about the proposed biodefense facility on the main Livermore campus being "built in a very highly populated area of Northern California." A ruling by the court is expected later this summer or in early autumn.



The Ninth Circuit is not currently examining plans for the proposed second biodefense lab at Site 300, which Homeland Security began pursuing earlier this year. Kelley said her group won't decide until later whether to take legal action against plans for that site.



According to Homeland Security officials, the proposed Site 300 lab might be authorized to work as high as Biosafety Level Four, where it could study even scarier microorganisms -- "the kind of lab where the researchers use 'moon suits' for their protection," Kelley said.



University of California spokesperson Chris Harrington said in a statement Wednesday that the lab would be a nice fit for California, which has one of the largest economies in the world and is a leading agricultural state.



It "will create local capabilities to respond quickly to any future diseases that may result from accidental or deliberate contagion," Harrington said. "In addition, this facility would further attract new biotechnology industry ... creating thousands of new jobs."



Besides Livermore lab, the other 17 candidates remaining are in 10 other states. Texas has four sites under consideration, the most of any competing state.



E-mail Keay Davidson at [email protected].



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