When news of the BSL-4 upgrade came out on the heels of the 1999 __West Nile virus outbreak, former employees and local environmental groups bombarded local officials — including New York State Assemblywoman Patricia Acampora — with phone calls. Acampora grew up on Long Island knowing little about Plum Island. "When you take the ferry over [to mainland Connecticut], you see this big island," she says. "All the other islands out there are small and don't have much to them. Then you wonder, 'Wait, what are those buildings over there?' "
In her five years on the job, Acampora had never concerned herself with Plum Island. Now, resolving to take the bull by the horns, she formed a task force to address the upgrade and all the strange things she was hearing. "Even though it's federal property, if something awful happens there, it affects the people of my district, no doubt about it. I had to speak out." Rather than a soapbox for disgruntled workers or a USDA admiration society, this would be, for the first time, a serious and inclusive effort to get real answers. It took political courage to do it, because the issue cut both ways. Many voters called to berate and accuse her of trying to shut the island down. " 'Look, I couldn't shut the place down if I tried,' " she remembers telling them. " 'I only want to start communicating. That's what we're trying to do here.' "
Acampora drafted political leaders, former scientists, engineers, USDA officials, New York State environmental officials, and county health officials. Seeking to legitimize her efforts with Plum Island officials, Acampora included experts like former Chief Engineer Merlon Wiggin and the respected former Plum Island scientist Dr. Carol House. "When you are dealing with the scientific community, right away they always get defensive," Acampora says. "They feel that no one but them can understand their work. Now I may not be a scientist, but I'm no dummy either."
The plan, she says, was to "make them talk to us about what was going on there." The group had five marathon-length meetings in which the USDA was "pummeled" with questions, with the assemblywoman leading the charge. "I asked them point-blank, 'Can you tell me that you have a fail-safe facility?' 'Can you tell me that nothing can go wrong, and that nothing has ever gone wrong?' And they didn't want to answer these questions." Plum Island's leadership still seemed unwilling to come clean. Dr. Huxsoll sent the task force a letter stating that unlike his predecessors, he would be open to communication. "And that's the last we heard from him," says Acampora. Huxsoll also failed to appear at a March 2001 community meeting, prompting one politician on the committee to exclaim, "I am stunned….It'sthese types of actions that have created this atmosphere of mistrust and suspicion…. "
Dr. Breeze hovered over the proceedings, and attended meetings here and there. "I spoke to him, too," says Acampora, referring to Breeze. "They're all the same." Except for another former director. Coming out of retirement to lend a hand was Dr. Jerry Callis, who was "very helpful" to Acampora and helped explain the science to the task force. At one open meeting, a boisterous crowd of detractors and supporters quieted as the white-haired Callis slowly rose from the back of the audience to speak. "I plead for your understanding," he began in low, measured tones. "These discussions remind me of 1953, the year I moved here. I wasn't welcome back then. I had my career here….It was a very fine career." Then he spoke to the issues at hand. "We all make mistakes…wemake poor decisions. All of us are becoming more aware about what we need to do to protect the environment. We can do dangerous work and protect the public. I can't address the need to improve the facility [to BSL-4], but they [the USDA] will listen to your concerns."
One of the few task force members supporting the upgrade, Greenport mayor David Kapell seemed "practically ecstatic about the prospects for local development," in the words of the New York Times. "There's always a concern," he told a reporter, "but it's got to be considered in light of the 50 years of history of a safe operation….Ihave faith in the government." The Times noted that as a real estate broker, the mayor had already sold at least half a dozen homes to Plum Island scientists over the years and stood to sell many more after an upgrade.
Plum Island, in a rare twist, then produced some good news. In April 2001, Plum Island's Dr. Fred Brown developed a "rapid test" that shrank the testing time for diagnosing foot-and-mouth disease virus from two days to ninety minutes. "The rapid test we developed is the most important discovery in fifty years," adds Dr. Breeze. The test is linked to an Internet-based epidemic management system in real time. "I'm working on this with the military — all kinds of people immediately start to work on the problem, and that completely changes what's possible." Said USDA spokeswoman Sandy Miller Hays, "This is not a magic bullet." But it's a commendable stride in the right direction, the kind of positive output the public would expect from Plum Island's animal disease research.
Hamptons-area environmentalist Robert DeLuca wasn't impressed. "Short of being on a geological fault," he said of the Plum Island upgrade, "I don't think you could find a worse place" for the laboratory. Thor Hansen, a World War II naval officer, stood up and said he'd been through three typhoons in the South Pacific and he knew rough weather better than anyone. In his opinion, the east end of Long Island had plenty of it and he was deeply troubled by the laboratory's location in the middle of a hurricane path.
"What disturbs me," wrote a state senator on the task force, "is the consistent flow of misinformation….I feel that some of the misinformation borders on a cover-up. [I]t shakes the foundation of our very form of government." Committee member Dr. Carol House witnessed an all-too-familiar routine. "I think [the task force] went a long way. But Plum Island didn't help themselves on that committee. They were caught up constantly. The problem was that there was no continuity in leadership, so no one in management — those answering the questions — knew the answers…. "
One comment in particular stoked the community's ire, according to reporter Karl Grossman. USDA official Wilda Martinez told the task force, "We'll listen to you and the community. But in the end, the federal government will decide what to do upon its own and move forward." They did just that. Despite the community's uproar, Dr. Huxsoll went ahead with a Request for Proposals to construct a $125 million laboratory renovation. The USDA, of course, said the largest renovation in Plum Island history had nothing to do with a BSL-4 upgrade.
The aggressive task force gained some ground in other ways. They successfully lobbied the USDA to remove sensitive material available on its Internet site, like maps and charts of the laboratories. Yet other dangerous items still remained on-line, waiting to be preyed upon.[49]
The task force uncovered another disturbing finding. The USDA, after all these years — and after all the EPA environmental law violations— still had stockpiled hazardous waste and still flushed contaminated sewage into area waters. Unable to order in the EPA as a state official, Acampora turned instead to the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) for help. A July 2000 DEC inspection report uncovered what it called "very troubling" environmental pollution on Plum Island, including solid waste, incinerator, hazardous waste, and sewage discharge violations— the same multiple infractions for which the EPA had cited Plum Island a decade ago. Not surprisingly, the USDA hadn't bothered to ameliorate the mess. New York State Attorney General Dennis Vacco filed a lawsuit against Plum Island, and Vacco's spokesman scolded Plum Island: "If the federal government doesn't follow environmental rules, who does?" In a June 2001 court-approved consent order, the USDA admitted violating three sewage effluent limitations. It exceeded permitted discharge by over 39,000 gallons daily and flushed out high fecal coliform levels (the dangerous barometer of other toxic animal viruses and bacteria) to the tune of 60,000 gallons a day. Once again, Plum Island agreed to stop fouling the water. Six months later, not much had changed. In December 2002, the National Resources Defense Council listed Plum Island second on its "Dirty Dozen" roll of the twelve biggest polluters in New Jersey and New York.
49
Conducting Internet research for this book, I uncovered many schematic and other diagrams of Plum Island available on-line, including a cache of sketches and documentation from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers from a study they conducted of Plum Island in the early 1990s. Ancillary to a free and democratic society, this and much other material is available on the Internet, including a virtual how-to guide published in 2000 by virus hunter Dr. C. J. Peters, titled "Are Hemorrhagic Fever Viruses Practical Agents for Biological Terrorism?" It reports the kill ratios of various quantities of Rift Valley fever virus, Marburg virus, yellow fever virus, and anthrax spores.