San Antonio site among 5 finalists for national germ lab
By SUZANNE GAMBOA
Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON — Sites in Texas and four other states are finalists for a $450 million national lab where killer germs like anthrax, avian flu and foot-and-mouth disease will be studied, Texas' U.S. senators said Wednesday.
Texas Research Park in northwest San Antonio is one of the possible hosts for the 520,000-square-foot National Bio- and Agro-Defense Lab, Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison said. Federal officials also have chosen sites in Georgia, Kansas, Mississippi and North Carolina, said Sen. John Cornyn.
"San Antonio's highly skilled and diverse work force, together with its outstanding research facilities, make it an ideal location for this facility," Cornyn said.
The sites were chosen by a team from the Homeland Security Department, the Agriculture Department and Health and Human Services. Homeland Security planned to issue a news release later Wednesday, said Larry Orluskie, department spokesman.
Texas had proposed three sites in San Antonio and one in Bryan-College Station offered by Texas A&M University.
The facility will replace an aging, smaller lab at Plum Island, N.Y., where security lapses after the 2001 terrorist attacks drew scrutiny from Congress and government investigators. It would bring at least 300 lab-related jobs, and more in construction, officials have said.
Congress provided money for the $47 million design and architecture, but no money has been appropriated for construction or operations.
The winner should be announced next year, with the lab operating by 2014.
The lab will have the highest-level security rating, BSL-4, meaning it would be equipped to handle the most lethal, incurable disease agents.
Sites that didn't make the cut were in California, Oklahoma, Maryland, Missouri, Wisconsin and Kentucky, which was working with Tennessee.
Community acceptance was one of the criteria, and some sites drew opposition from area residents.
As officials were whittling the list, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suspended Texas A&M's federal research on the most dangerous infectious diseases after two cases in which the school did not immediately report researchers' exposures to contagions.
The other finalists are in Athens, Ga.; Manhattan, Kan.; Madison County, Miss.; and a site that includes Granville and Durham counties in North Carolina.
The Plum Island lab that will be replaced conducts research on foot-and-mouth disease and other germs to protect agriculture and livestock from foreign diseases. The new lab will do that and possibly research on other diseases and contagions such as anthrax, smallpox and Marburg and Lassa fever, rare hemorrhagic fevers that attack arteries and veins.
___
On the Net:
http://www.dhs.gov
http://www.statesman.com/news/conten...ontagions.html
Linear Mode
