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Locals Assess Bio-Lab
Impact Statement
Call it a community-wide summer read
ing project: the thousand-page Draft
Environmental Impact Statement (or DEIS)
that the U.S. Department of Homeland
Security (DHS) recently released on the pro
posed National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility,
or NBAF. The document, available online via
www.dhs.gov/nbaf, was released June 20, and
the public comment period pertaining to it is
open through Aug. 25, with a public meeting
planned for Athens on Aug 14.
The people taking a close look at the DEIS
will probably need most of that time, too.
Contacted last week, UGA Vice-President for
Research David Lee had completed a first read
of the document, but was planning on more.
Meanwhile, Grady Thrasher, co-founder of
FAQ (the anti-NBAF organization "For Athens
Quality-of-Life"), reports that he's taking the
DEIS one piece at a time and working his way
through it.
What are the two mens' thoughts so far?
Lee says he's struck, at the outset, by two
main points: one, he calls the DEIS a "very
comprehensive document," and says that the
DHS people putting it together "haven't pulled
any punches." That is,'they haven't shied away
from a discussion of "worst-case scenarios."
"What's more," Lee says, "they appear to
me to have taken the lessons to heart from
Boston." That's a reference to last year's
National Academies of Science critique of a
Draft Supplemental Environmental Report done
by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for
a biocontainment lab being built in Boston,
MA. The National Academies report claimed
that the NIH report had not adequately
addressed or identified worst-case scenarios.
Secondly, Lee says, the five potential sites
which are on the mainland appear to be on
equal footing for winning the final site selec
tion. (What about the sixth, Plum Island, NY?
We'll get to that in a moment.) "The mainland
sites all seem to me to be separated by shades
of gray," Lee says. There are pros and cons to
each, but none are off the list, and none are
head and shoulders above the rest.
PLUM ISLAND SAFER?
An appendix of the DEIS dealing with
"Accidents Methodology," though, indicates
that Plum Island would present a lower safety
risk than any of the mainland sites in the
event of the release of a dangerous pathogen
from the proposed lab. That appears to be
partly an effect of its being an island, but also
an effect of its being nearer to urban areas,
where the numbers of livestock and wildlife
which could serve as "vectors" for transmis
sion of disease are lower than at the mainland
sites, which are all much nearer to active agri
cultural areas.
Lee, though, calls the increase in safety
apparently afforded by Plum Island "an
incremental increase in safety.... We're not
talking about major versus negligible, we're
talking about something that's incremental in
nature." And, he says, there are other factors
to consider. That difference in safety would
be mitigated by a plethora of safety controls,
as well as being balanced in his mind by the
"enrichment" of the lab's being "in a more
supportive research environment" than Plum
Island provides.
For Thrasher, though, "So far, that's the
point that we hope to drive home, is that
Plum Island would be safer because of its
insular characteristics." FAQ plans to examine
the DEIS for any inconsistencies or gaps, and
to assess its modeling and analysis as DHS
moves toward a final Environmental Impact
Statement (and site decision) later this year;
the group even has its own experts in wildlife,
economics and geology who plan to look at
the document. "We want to determine what
are the valid comments and criticisms of the
EIS," Thrasher says. He adds, "We want to
determine what are the deficiencies, both
from a legal standpoint and from a profes
sional discipline standpoint, so that we can
ask questions."
SOME DETAILS
Thrasher already has questions about the
expected job creation at NBAF, since the DEIS
shows that the vast majority of researchers
would likely transfer there from Plum Island,
leaving only 69 positions to be filled locally.
Lee says he looks long-term at economic
impacts, though, expecting that even if that
estimate is correct, more jobs will turn over to
local citizens as time goes on. He puts stock
in economic multiplying factors too, saying,
"I've never seen this as the economic impact
of just NBAF itself." Rather, Lee thinks that
NBAF could "help us to break this stalemate
we're in, where we can't get significant life
science development in this area."
There are specific details that the DEIS
clears up for each of the sites. Examples for
Athens are traffic and visibility; on the latter,
it says, "Visual impacts from the proposed
NBAF would be high... It would be similar in
size to a 400-bed hospital or a 1,600 student
high school." Building heights could go as
high as 90 feet, the report says, and there
would also be a large water tank and a "highly
visible" security fence surrounding the facility.
At least one detail is not yet resolved, and
a desire to see it settled is one point on which
Lee and NBAFs opponents probably agree. DHS
has not yet decided whether animal carcasses
would be disposed of by incineration or in
sterilized liquid waste. Incineration may have
to be looked at more closely since Athens'
air quality is close to key federal thresholds
already. With the possible exception of the
incineration question, Lee says, "I don't see
the impact on air quality as a dealbreaker."
He says that in general, "the impacts on the
environment seem to me to be what you'd
expect from an economic development project
like this. They don't seem to be excessive or
outsized relative to the project."
Meanwnile, Thrasher says FAQ still feels
that the level of community acceptance of
NBAF is low, and that the organization's plan
as the decision-making process continues is to
"leverage" that sentiment to "make DHS feel
very uncomfortable about coming to Athens."
Ben Emanuel ben@flagpole.com
Downtown Business Owners
Aim to Take on Panhandling
It's been almost two years since members
of the then brand-new Downtown Athens
Business Association (DABA) convened at the
then brand-new Hilton Garden Inn and lashed
out at ACC Police over what they saw as lax
enforcement of laws concerning panhandling.
Although police and other county officials
explained then—and still do today—that they
are in some ways limited in enforcement by
citizens' First Amendment rights, some DABA
members would have none of it. "Who's con
cerned about the rights of the business peo
ple?" asked Chick Piano owner Anne Shepherd
that day.
DABA, created in 2006 out of the remnants
of the former Athens Downtown Council,
planned after that high-tension meeting to
form a committee to study panhandling and
how to more strictly regulate it, but that com
mittee never panned out. At a DABA board
meeting last month, though, the concern
with panhandling finally
resurfaced.
"As business owners,"
Misada owner Irvin Alhadeff
sa d at that June 18 meet
ing, "we hear quite often that people just
won't come downtown, and their friends say
they don't want to come downtown, because
there's so many problems." Amy Clark and
Chuck Jones of the Athens Convention and
Visitors Bureau reported a lot of feedback
from convention-goers and other visitors to
Athens who are apparently surprised, and even
"shocked," to encounter the type of panhan
dling they do in Athens.
Alhadeff did compliment police on their
work, and said in general there's been
improvement lately (from the perspective
of business owners) on panhandling issues.
"It's a whole lot better than it was six or
seven years ago," Rusty Heery agreed. But
Alhadeff said that while panhandling as a
general occurrence downtown may have gone
down, incidents of persistent panhandling,
and what's seen as more extreme, aggressive
behavior, have business owners concerned.
Regulating those more aggressive inci- .
dents, though, shouldn't technically be a
problem: present ACC code specifically pro
hibits "accosting" someone in the process of
asking them for money, as well as doing so "in
a boisterous, turbulent or agitated manner,"
blocking their passage down the sidewalk,
or being vulgar or profane while solicit
ing money. Present code specifically does
not prohibit asking for money; if it did, the
Salvation Army and any number of charitable
groups would breaking the law routinely.
If there's a problem with downtown police
not enforcing those aggressive incidents
strictly enough, ACC Police Chief Jack Lumpkin
told DABA board members, then it's a problem
with individual police officer behavior. But, he
made clear, police always need a witness to
the alleged act—either themselves or a citizen
willing to testify in court—if they're going to
have any reasonable chance at prosecution.
DABA members plan to bring their con
cerns and ideas to ACC Commissioners soon,
and they've already done their homework. The
group has a draft report in the works, largely
consisting of a review of panhandling ordi
nances in other cities across the country. Tony
Arnold, the owner of Jackson Street Books and
a DABA board member, who's done most of the
work to compile that in-progress report, makes
specific mention of a new
law approved last year in
Tacoma, WA. It's likely that
DABA will present that law,
or a similar one, to the ACC
government as a model.
What does the Tacoma ordinance look like?
It prohibits persistent panhandling, for one
thing, stating that after the person solicited
for money has given "a negative response,"
asking them again is coercion and is out
lawed. More than that, though, the Tacoma .
ordinance goes into great detail in restricting
the location of any solicitation. Solicitation
for money there is illegal within 15 feet of a
building (without the building owner's permis
sion), a pay phone, a bus stop, an ATM, and
more, including a parked vehicle whose occu
pants are entering or exiting the vehicle. The
ordinance also outlaws soliciting on private
property (again, without the property owner's
permission), in any public transportation facil
ity or vehicle, or at night (i.e., "after sunset
or before sunrise").
How a discussion of panhandling will go
in Athens—if DABA can get it rolling with
elected officials—is still an open question.
Business owners, though, are ready to address
it. "Basically, we're fed up with the situation,"
Alhadeff said at last month's meeting. He
added, "We don't want to have to hear people
say, 'We don't want to come downtown, there's
just too much trouble there.'"
Ben Emanuel ben@flagpole.com
“Basically, we’re fed up
with the situation.”
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