Groups Aims to Delay Opening of Biological Facility at Lawrence Livermore National Lab
Global Security Newswire
Two activist groups have asked a federal appeals court to delay the opening of a facility for testing dangerous biological agents at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, the San Francisco Chronicle reported today (see GSN, Feb. 22, 2005).
Tri-Valley CARES and Nuclear Watch of New Mexico say additional environmental assessment is needed before the opening of the facility, which is to study agents including anthrax, Q fever, botulism and plague.
The “deadly bioagents tested at this facility could escape to the environment through earthquake, fire, terrorist attack, sabotage, operator error or failure of the containment filters through which the air in the facility would be exhausted to the outside,” said lawyer Stephan Volker in papers filed with the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
The facility is scheduled to open in April. Lawrence Livermore has previously conducted biodefense research, but the new Biosafety Level 3 laboratory would enable research on more dangerous agents.
The groups are appealing the 2004 ruling of U.S. District Court Judge Saundra Armstrong that the U.S. Energy Department could go forward with the laboratory.
Officials from the laboratory said they would oppose the lawsuit, which could “potentially delay the startup of important homeland security research.”
Laboratory officials said they believed Armstrong ruled correctly. “The same issues that were raised at the trial-court level — and rejected there — are being put forward again,” a laboratory statement said. “We believed then and continue to believe that (the judge's ruling) was a sound decision.”
Laboratory spokesman Steve Wampler said the facility would conduct research on countermeasures against biological weapons, not develop new weapons.
“The U.S. is a signatory to the (international) biowarfare convention and does not conduct bioweapons research,” he said.
Volker, however, maintained that “this kind of research actually has no clear demarcation between offensive and defensive weapons.” He argued that in the course of their research, scientists could unknowingly create new weapons that could be used by terrorists.
Laboratory security is also questionable, he added, citing occasions “where keys were lost (and) facilities were left exposed to potential theft of these kinds of materials.” Volker also said facility filters might not prevent the agents from escaping into the environment (Keay Davidson, San Francisco Chronicle, Feb. 17).
