Buzzing GNAT could be Granville lab's undoing

Homeland Security project meets formidable, organized opposition

Unpleasant surprises aren't part of the marketing playbook on how to land a big project.

So it's fair to say something went especially wrong in the fall for supporters of a $450 million bio-defense lab proposed for Granville County.

The depth of the supporters' problem wasn't obvious at the time, even to lab opponents. But those who study economic development say significant opposition to the 520,000-square-foot lab was inevitable, given Granville's history and the state's handling of the project.

"With a name like 'bio-defense,' you had to know there would be opposition," said Jim Johnson, a Kenan-Flagler Business School professor in Chapel Hill. "There's a whole body of literature on how to market this kind of thing. Somebody dropped the ball if they were surprised."

Bill McKellar doesn't know anything about academic studies that explain why someone would sell T-shirts and collect signatures to turn back a lab promising hundreds of new jobs.

But he knows firsthand how Granville County residents blocked a hazardous waste incinerator from being built in the county in the early 1990s.

The experience provided him and other opponents with a handy template when they decided in the fall that they wanted nothing to do with the bio-defense lab proposed by the Department of Homeland Security.

"To be honest, we got started a bit late," said McKellar, who owns the Quality Drug pharmacy on Central Avenue in Butner. "But we had our Rolodex from the last fight, and we even had money left over that we never spent."

In this case, "we" is the Granville Nonviolent Action Team, known locally as GNAT.

Though opposition groups with clever acronyms are common, GNAT set itself apart with a decision by members in 1990 to get themselves arrested if that's what it took to stop the incinerator.

Several dozen adults needed to make good on that promise. A few even went to jail before the company, Thermalchem, decided it no longer wanted to set up shop in Granville County.

About a dozen of those members -- now in their late 50s and early 60s -- formed the core of the group opposing the bio-defense lab. They see no need at this point to get arrested over a proposal, but it has been mentioned as a possibility should Granville be selected.

Georgia, Texas, Kansas and Mississippi are also being considered for the lab. Each site has its strengths. North Carolina's site is 249 acres of secluded, state-owned property just north of Butner. If the federal government really wants to build there, the local government can do little to stop the project.

But that hasn't kept opponents from showing up by the dozens at hearings. They have peppered elected officials with questions and demanded that local governments withdraw support for the project. Several have agreed.

In between, the opponents hold fundraisers, ride across the county on horseback to collect signatures, show up at hearings pushing symbolic coffins and do whatever else they think will keep their cause alive.

"We learned a lot from the incinerator fight in the '90s," said Elaine McNeill, 65, who lives on a tobacco farm in central Granville.

GNAT's history isn't a mystery to state officials. They knew about the incinerator fight, expected opposition to the lab and even contacted a former spokesman of the group at one point. But GNAT members aren't likely to be found at meetings of the Chamber of Commerce, civic clubs or local governments, where supporters most often made their pitches for the bio-defense project.

"A lot of people never heard those presentations," McKellar said.