Donald Trump considers buying Plum Island
With the building of the the National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility (NBAF) in Manhattan, Kansas to replace the aging and outdated, six-decade old Plum Island Animal Disease Center in Suffolk County, New York, the federal government is required to sell Plum Island with the proceeds going to offset the costs of the new facility.
Now there is at least one man of means at least considering purchasing the property, none other than New York’s own Donald Trump.
According to an interview with the Associated Press, Trump said, “I’d be interested in looking at it. It is a very complicated subject and nobody knows what is going to happen.”
However, the state of New York is requiring the federal government, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and General Services Administration (GSA) in particular, to present a comprehensive environmental cleanup plan for Plum Island to address a number of serious environmental issues before the property could be sold or transferred.
“Over the past three years, New York State has raised the issue of potentially serious environmental issues at the federal government’s Animal Disease Center on Plum Island that have not been fully addressed,” New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said.
“Before the sale of Plum Island can continue, Washington must step up and sign a legally binding consent order spelling out its full plan for cleaning up the Island and giving the State oversight authority to make sure the work has been done properly. For the safety of Long Islanders, we cannot let this Island be sold without the animal disease center and surrounding area being subjected to a full inspection and cleanup.”
Related article: Did Lyme disease originate out of Plum Island?
The 843-acre island off the eastern tip of Long Island houses a laboratory that studies infectious animal diseases that could imperil the nation’s livestock industry. Congress voted in 2009 to close the aging laboratory, which opened in 1954.
As for Mr. Trump, he says he has yet to consider exactly what he might do with the property.
“We would do something, but it would not be on a big scale,” Trump said. “We would look at it and come up with something appropriate.”
[…] Donald Trump considers buying Plum Island […]