By ANN HINCH
Assistant Editor

SOMERSET, Ky. — After more than a year of waiting for news, this small southern town learned last week it will not be the site of a new $451 million research lab funded through the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

The five final sites DHS chose for environmental impact studies – the final list from which the winner should be announced in October 2008 – are located in Mississippi, Texas, North Carolina, Georgia and Kansas. These were whittled down from a total of 29 applicants last year for the National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility (NBAF).

Zoonotic research – the study of diseases which can make the jump from animal to human – will be the lab’s primary purpose, especially the highest-rated infectious agents classified as BSL-4 (bio-safety level). These include pathogens which pose a risk of life-threatening disease and have no vaccine or antibody.

Proximity
Surviving the first round of cuts this spring was a site northeast of Somerset, located in Pulaski County just west of Interstate 75 in southeastern Kentucky.

The University of Kentucky, the University of Louisville, the Kentucky-based National Institute for Hometown Security (NIHS), the University of Tennessee and Tennessee’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) formed a consortium to pitch the site to DHS last year.

“We honestly thought that we had put together a really strong proposal,” said Dr. Robert Moore, associate dean of research at the UT College of Veterinary Medicine, adding that having such a research lab so close would “be great for the area … great for the schools involved.”

As for why Somerset wasn’t chosen, he said while the site met DHS’ minimum requirements for location, DHS wants the lab to be geographically closer to a research institution or university. The consortium deliberately chose its site to be distant from large urban areas, Moore said, in the manner of the Manhattan Project research sites of the 1940s – for safety and security.

Ewell Balltrip, president and COO of NIHS, that NIHS’ primary role is to “seek out and engage opportunities in research and development” on behalf of the consortium. Back in June, he said, “This facility could be an early catalyst toward transforming the economy in the region toward a more technological and scientific education.”

Opposition
While some Pulaski County politicians and local officials – not to mention some business groups – were looking forward to the local jobs such a lab might have created for the area, not everyone was eager for its presence.

Citizens Against a Kentucky Biolab is a group of Somerset-area residents concerned about the safety of such a facility for the area.
They took issue, for example, with reassurances that the lab would be well-protected against the release of infectious agents to the outside.

There are other such labs in the United States, said Citizens member Kenneth King, a local college English instructor and lawyer, and the group’s main researcher. But, he said, the federal government’s claim that there has never been a release of infectious agents from inside those facilities “is not exactly accurate,” citing numerous safety violations he found reported over the decades from those areas.

Having “no catastrophic incidents … is a pretty extreme definition of safety,” King said.

Among the other concerns King cited is the region’s karst topography, which means the bedrock is riddled with caves and has aquifers providing large supplies of water. Citizens members worried if infectious agents did escape the lab, these supplies would be poisoned.

“We’re glad that we didn’t get it,” said Keenan Turner, state coordinator of Kentucky’s grazing program, “but we still question the validity of it and the need for it elsewhere in the United States.” He added the group also “questions the sanity” of anyone actively wanting the lab near them.

Turner spent 27 years as Pulaski County’s UK extension agent. He became involved with Citizens because he lives within 10 miles of the site, and is interested in people’s health. Like King, he was concerned a pathogen might get out and infect locals or even beyond.

According to King, more than 6,000 people had signed a petition asking DHS not to build the lab in Somerset. Since Citizens formed last year, its members have given interviews, published materials, designed a website and taken out advertising to protest the lab.
“(If I were a farmer) I would want it as far away from my own livestock as I could get it,” King said.

As the appointed head of an advisory council to hold meetings about the facility, local Farm Bureau representative Mark Haney didn’t object to the lab. “I think it’s of vital importance to the agricultural industry to have a facility like this somewhere in the United States,” he said.

“We’re not saying it has to be in your backyard or my backyard. We endorse it there, and we would endorse it somewhere else.”
His committee – now moot – had not yet met, instead waiting on DHS.

“Unless we’re going to make the short list, there’s really no need to go through all these town hall-type meetings,” Haney explained before last week’s decision.

Moore said forming the consortium allowed the people involved to learn more about each other’s research.

“There is a feeling that we should try to keep this consortium together, that there might be other opportunities we can take advantage of,” he added.

“We took a really, really good shot at (getting the lab).”