Hearing set on Plum Island lab closing, sale

The public will get a chance Thursday night to comment on the U.S. government's controversial plan to sell Plum Island after closing its animal disease laboratory.

The General Services Administration hearing will be at 6 p.m. at Greenport High School.

Despite opposition, the government plans to sell the 840-acre island off the North Fork to the highest bidder after the Department of Homeland Security opens a $1.14 billion laboratory in Manhattan, Kan. It would replace the Plum Island Animal Disease Center, which employs about 200 people from Long Island and Connecticut.

In a draft environmental impact statement released this summer, the agencies said the island could be used for high-density development of as many as 750 homes. Most Long Island government and environmental leaders want to keep the lab open or, if it closes, keep the undeveloped part of island as open space.

Homeland Security spokesman John Verrico said Wednesday that the agency this year received the first construction allocation to pay for building the $40 million central utility plant. The current schedule calls for the Kansas lab to open between 2019 and 2021, followed by one to two years of testing and certification of equipment before the Plum Island facility is then shut. Decommissioning and cleaning up the Plum Island lab would take another one to two years, Verrico said.