PERSPECTIVE: Plum IslandCongress’s Spending Bill Protects a Mysterious Island for Studying Diseases from the Auction Block

Published 28 December 2020

For decades, Plum Island, off the northeast edge of Long Island, has been the subject of the kind of conspiracy theories the Internet loves. The truth is more prosaic: By order of Congress, the Plum Island Animal Disease Laboratory opened in 1956 to study how to combat dangerous foreign animal pathogens, such as foot-and-mouth disease. A dozen years ago, Congress approved a plan to move the animal research facility to Manhattan, Kansas. The move was to be followed by auctioning Plum Island to the highest bidder. A coalition consisting of environmental groups, Native American nations, local businesses, and other organizations was formed to block any such sale. James Bennet writes that “deep within the 5,000-plus pages of the spending bill awaiting President Trump’s signature… is a terse provision that saves Plum Island from the auction block.”

For decades, Plum Island, off the northeast edge of Long Island, has been the subject of the kind of conspiracy theories the Internet loves: that the government concocted Lyme disease there; that the so-called Montauk Monster, an admittedly terrifying carcass that washed up on a Long Island beach in 2008, was the spawn of some Plum Island mutant-making lab.

James Bennett writes in the Washington Post that Plum Island even got an ominous name-check in the movie “Silence of the Lambs,” when the FBI agent played by Jodie Foster offered Hannibal Lecter, the cannibal played by Anthony Hopkins, the chance to vacation there in exchange for information. “Anthrax island?” he asked, mockingly.

Bennet adds:

By order of Congress, the Plum Island Animal Disease Laboratory opened in 1956 to study how to combat dangerous foreign animal pathogens, such as foot-and-mouth disease. The security that cloaked the island, and the fact that the Army was in the midst of constructing a bioweapons laboratory there when it turned the island over to the Agriculture Department, led to decades of suspicion that even more dangerous experiments were underway. It didn’t help that DHS took control of the place after the 9/11 attacks.

A dozen years ago, Congress approved a plan to move the animal research facility to Manhattan, Kansas. The move was to be followed by auctioning Plum Island to the highest bidder.

Bennet notes that a coalition — the Preserve Plum Island Coalition– consisting of environmental groups, Native American nations, local businesses, and other organizations was formed to block any such sale. The groups argued that one of the unintended consequence of biosecurity-driven need to keep Plum Island in strict isolation for all these years had been to turn it into a “de facto wildlife sanctuary.”

Bennet writes that

deep within the 5,000-plus pages of the spending bill awaiting President Trump’s signature — possibly in vain — is a terse provision that saves Plum Island from the auction block.

….

Under the terms of the compromise spending bill, Plum Island would be offered to other federal agencies, such as the Fish and Wildlife Service. If they declined to take it on, it could go to a state or local government. In addition, DHS would get $18.9 million to clean up the site (an undertaking that will no doubt inflame the conspiracy theorists). Members of the Plum Island coalition ultimately hope to conserve the ecosystem and its creatures, create a new research facility and museum, and open the island, gingerly, to the public.