Senators Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand today urged the Senate Committee on Appropriations to prevent Plum Island from being sold to a private developer, according to a press release issued this afternoon by Schumer’s office.
Schumer and Gillibrand are pushing to repeal provisions of a 2008 law that require the island to be sold to the highest bidder, and instead allow the land to be obtained by a federal agency, like the National Park Service or U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, that will commit to preserving Plum Island as an ecological resource. The site has “immense environmental value,” the senators said.
The 840-acre Plum Island, home to the Plum Island Animal Disease Center since 1954, will be put up for sale by the federal government to offset construction costs of a new replacement facility now being built in Kansas. The National Bio- and Agro-Defense Facility in Manhattan, Kansas is scheduled to be fully operational in December 2022, according to the Department of Homeland Security. Current operations at Plum Island will continue until the mission is transitioned to the Kansas facility in 2023, according to the DHS website.
A coalition of environmental and civic organizations have been advocating preservation of the island ever since the federal government, which initially considered building the new agro- and bio-defense facility on the island, decided instead to sell it.
“With open space ever dwindling on Long Island, we should do everything possible to preserve the environmental and wildlife habitat that is Plum Island,” Schumer said. “We should change current law and prevent Plum Island from being sold to a private developer. It would be a mistake and lost opportunity to rip apart this unique 840-acre environmental setting and destroy the habitat of the endangered species that live there.”
“It would be an irreversible mistake to sell off Plum Island for private development, “ said Gillibrand, a member of the Environment and Public Works Committee, “and we should instead ensure that it continues to be federally protected for future generations.”
Rep. Lee Zeldin introduced legislation last year that would prevent a sale by the federal government to the highest bidder in order to protect the island.
“This bill has bipartisan support from the entire Long Island and Connecticut delegation in both the House and Senate. Plum Island is cherished by the local community, not only as an essential resource for research, but also for its abundance in cultural, historical, ecological, and natural resources,” the congressman said in an op-ed column published today. “Congress should take action to pursue a better direction for Plum Island that would allow for continued research, public access and permanent preservation.”
According to the House of Representatives website, Zeldin’s bill was referred to the House subcommittee on cyber security, infrastructure protection and security technologies on April 29, 2015. His bill has bipartisan cosponsorship by 23 other representatives.
Schumer said the federal government estimated it would receive $32.85 million from the sale of Plum Island. Interested developers once included Donald Trump, who in 2013 expressed interest in purchasing the island to build “a world-class golf course” there.
Schumer said the amount any sale might fetch “pales in comparison to the overall cost of the state-of-the-art Kansas facility” — which currently carries a price tag of more than $1 billion — and that of the environmental value of Plum Island, which the senator called “priceless.”
“I have two priorities regarding Plum Island,” Southold Supervisor Scott Russell said in an interview today. “Protect the jobs and preserve the island, in that order. I would support any measure that advances those goals,” he said.
“It is our hope that the facility stay there, and if it doesn’t, that a new operator make full use of the facilities there,” Russell said.
Preservation of the land in public ownership would not preserve jobs. The town attempted to do both with zoning adopted in 2013 that would greatly restrict development on the island while allowing development within a research district, where the code sets a minimum lot size of 125 acres.
The new zoning “assures that a substantial portion of the island can’t be developed,” Russell said. About 700 acres of the 840 on the island would be a preserve, he said.
The 2008 provisions legislators are seeking to repeal were enacted after the Plum Island Animal Disease Center was put on a short list of six locations to be considered for construction of the biosafety level four defense facility — an integrated research, development, test, and evaluation facility for combating bio- and agro- terrorism threats. The inclusion of Plum Island on the list of finalist locations sparked protest on the North Fork.
The Plum Island facility, established to research animal diseases, has historically conducted much of the research that would be conducted at the NBAF as concerns agriculture, according to the Department of Homeland Security, which took ownership operation of the Plum Island Animal Disease Center in 2003. But a new state-of-the-art, BSL-4 facility was needed to fill an “infrastructure gap” to combat bio- and agro-terrorism in the United States.
Plum Island is a BSL-3 facility. “Biosafety level” refers to the level of the biocontainment precautions required to isolate dangerous biological agents in an enclosed laboratory facility. More stringent biocontainment precautions are needed to work with agents known or believed to be more dangerous to the external environment.
In 2009, DHS ultimately chose the Manhattan, Kansas site. Construction on the 574,000-square-foot facility started in May 2015.
