The consideration of adding a Level 4 Bio-weapons research facility to Site 300, the high explosives Experimental Test location of Lawrence Livermore National Nuclear Weapons Laboratory, is without a doubt a bad idea for anyone living in and around Tracy.
The new bio-lab would study diseases with no known cure. Furthermore, it has been stated that the new facility would replace the existing lab on Plum Island, off the coast of Long Island, NY, which houses Lab 257, the reported source of the bio-weapons breach that led to the infection of the entire continent with West Nile Virus. Presumably, many employees of the replaced facility would be transferred to the new facility here, quite possibly including some that may have had involvement in that breach.
The University of California would manage the facility. The campus of UC Davis was previously proposed as a site for a Level 4 high-security bio-defense lab, but that was scrapped after a rhesus monkey used for breeding purposes (breeding what, I wonder) escaped from a medical research center on the Davis campus in February 2003.
It is thus conceivable that we would have in our back yard, a high-risk bio-facility with both management and employees associated with prior breaches.
As it stands, most, if not all Tracy residents live within the blast zone of an uncontrolled nuclear detonation at Site 300, never mind the fallout path due to prevailing wind patterns, which would almost certainly affect any that survive the hellish explosion.
The additional risk of a breach of anthrax, small pox, Ebola, or some other new and deadly designer microbe from a location prone to earthquakes (a stones throw away from the Greenville fault) compounds the threat to those of us who live and work in areas that would be severely impacted.
We are told of enemy forces in the Middle East and elsewhere that stockpile weapons among civilians, and yet we live next to the largest cache of plutonium on the planet. LLNL is one of the two National Weapons Labs that are most certainly high on the Department of Homeland Security’s list of terrorist target risks. Disaster scenarios that include the devastation of Tracy undoubtedly exist. Clearly new and additional scenarios would be needed with the additional risks the new facility would bring, not to mention, we’d climb even higher on the target list.
If you don’t buy any of this, do you think the addition of 300 jobs outweighs the impact on your property value? Surely this would be required in your disclosure. Of course, it may bring an opportunity to start a business related to the hazmat industry.