Bio-Warfare Laboratory Causes Great Concern

Email

Print

Share

July 12, 2006 9:55 AM

A research facility specializing in the study of bio-warfare is scheduled to start operating this August, and community groups are not happy.  They say the facility poses life-threatening risks to the some seven million residents in the San Francisco Bay area.

Located inside the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, the facility will stock deadly pathogens, including anthrax, plague and botulism.  Lawyers representing the groups say researchers at the site plan to spray the agents as if they were aerosols inside a controlled area at the lab. 

They argue that the Department of Energy has not done the needed safety studies of the risks associated with combined nuclear and bio-warfare research in the same laboratory.  The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory is responsible for ensuring that the nation's nuclear weapons remain safe and reliable through research and application.

"To propose operation of this extremely hazardous facility in the San Francisco Bay area without required environmental reviews is not only illegal but irresponsible," explains attorney Stephan Volker.  "All it would take is a single earthquake to unleash billions of deadly pathogens on an unsuspecting public."

The Department of Energy says it did conduct an environmental assessment and found only low-level risks to the community.

But attorney Loulena Miles, who represents the Tri-Valley Cares group, which is filing suit with the DOE over the facility, disagrees.  "The low-level, cursory study that the DOE conducted improperly dismissed serious threats, such as filter failures, terrorists attacks, sabotage, transportation accidents, earthquakes and fire."

The case is currently waiting for a decision from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco.