Mississippi lab site jumped to head of line

WASHINGTON -- The Homeland Security Department swept aside evaluations by government experts and named Mississippi -- home to powerful U.S. lawmakers with sway over the agency -- as one of five finalists for a new $451 million laboratory to study biological threats, according to internal documents obtained by The Associated Press.

A site in Granville County, N.C., near Butner is also among the five finalists.

Mississippi's lawmakers include the Democratic chairman of the department's oversight committee in the House and the senior Republican on the Senate Appropriations Committee, which is expected to approve money to build the National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility at one of five sites being considered. The two lawmakers said they were unaware that a Homeland Security evaluation system gave the Mississippi site a low score.

"It is very suspicious," said Irwin Goldman of the University of Wisconsin, a leader of the unsuccessful effort to build the lab in Madison, Wis. His community's offer was among nine sites rejected even though the government gave them a higher score than Mississippi's. "We wondered how everybody else did. It's interesting to know that we came out ahead of one that was short-listed."

Homeland Security undersecretary Jay Cohen determined that community opposition to the new lab in Wisconsin was too great, even though the area is home to highly respected researchers. A former Navy officer, Cohen is a political appointee, nominated by President Bush in June 2006.

There has also been significant opposition to the biolab in North Carolina, but the Granville County site received the highest score of the five sites that remain in contention. Jamie Johnson, a spokesman for the federal Department of Homeland Security, said at a July 29 public hearing in North Carolina that the state has some of the most vocal opposition among the five finalists.

The City of Raleigh has expressed concern that the lab could pollute the city's water supply. This year, the board of commissioners in Granville County, where the lab would go, withdrew support for the project.

James Lumpkins, chairman of the Granville County commissioners, said public opposition has grown so strong in his area that it might be better to leave the lab where it sits. "Where the best site is, I don't know," Lumpkins said. "But I think it would be more comfortable for a lot of people if it was left on Plum Island."

Supporters, including universities, companies and state leaders, say the lab would mean more than 500 scientific,technical and administrative jobs for the Triangle. They also say it would raise the area's profile as a center of biotechnology.

Build it and they'll come

Government experts originally expressed concerns that the proposed site in Flora, Miss., was far from existing biodefense research programs and lacked ready access to workers already familiar with highly contagious animal and human diseases, such as foot-and-mouth virus, that could devastate the U.S. livestock industry. They assigned the site a score that ranked it 14th among 17 candidate sites in the United States.

But Cohen, overruled those concerns under the theory that skilled researchers would move to Mississippi if it were selected for the new lab, according to a July 2007 internal government memorandum, marked "sensitive information" and obtained by the AP.

"It raised my eyebrows a bit when Mississippi was selected," said George Stewart of the University of Missouri, another rejected location that also earned a score higher than Mississippi's. "Obviously, there were factors other than what they were looking at in the site visits. The group that did the site visits were scientists and know what they were looking for. I don't know what DHS was looking for."