Obama FY 2015 budget: $300 million for National Bio- and Agro- Defense Facility (NBAF)
President Obama’s Fiscal Year 2015 budget was released today and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) would get $60.9 billion in total budget authority. $49.0 billion in gross discretionary funding, $38.2 billion in net discretionary funding, and $4.4 billion in discretionary fees.
Photo credit: Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
This includes $3.8 billion for the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) screening operations, $1.25 billion for cybersecurity activities, $10.2 billion to support disaster resiliency, primarily through the grants programs that are administered by FEMA and the Disaster Relief Fund (DRF) and $2.6 billion to support Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) activities.
In this DHS budget on page 11 is the following:
$300 million to complete the funding necessary to construct the National Bio- and Agro- Defense Facility (NBAF), a state-of-the-art bio-containment facility for the study of foreign animal and emerging zoonotic diseases that is central to the protection of the Nation’s food supply and security.
Manhattan, Kansas was selected as the NBAF location after an extensive three-year site selection process that included a thorough risk assessment, environmental impact assessment, and security assessment. The Manhattan location puts the NBAF in proximity to research of NBAF-related missions in veterinary, agriculture, and bio-security research expertise, and resources. This location also puts NBAF in proximity to a major hub of the veterinary pharmaceutical industry. The NBAF will be built on a site on Kansas State University adjacent to the existing Biosecurity Research Institute.
The $1.25 billion new lab is designed to conduct research on large animals and related diseases to replace an aging facility at Plum Island, N.Y.
