The foot-and-mouth virus does not infect humans but could devastate herds of cattle, swine, lambs and sheep.

Kansas officials have been aggressive in preparing their bid for the lab. The 2008 Legislature approved construction of backup utility systems to support the facility.

Kansas State University already conducts similar research at its Biosecurity Research Institute.

Cravens said she wouldn’t want to send a child to Kansas State if the new lab were to be built in Manhattan, a sentiment she said she has others express.

But Ron Trewyn, Kansas State’s vice president for research, said it’s important that the new lab’s research be conducted near those already doing similar work. He also said more than 130 animal health firms operate between Manhattan to Columbia, Mo.

He said five of the eight pathogens that the new lab will research can immediately be studied at the Biosecurity Research Institute.

Trewyn said the new lab won’t be a threat to the community, just as the federal Centers for Disease Control isn’t a risk to Atlanta.

“The threat to Kansas isn’t NBAF being here, it’s NBAF not being here,” he said.

Other area residents said they would have opposed the research at the Biosecurity Research Institute had they known about it, but the institute was built before the public knew what was happening. They also wanted to know who would pick up their health care costs should humans be sickened by a disease.

Myron Calhoun, a retired Kansas State engineering professor, pointed out several problems with Homeland Security’s draft environmental impact statement. For example, he noted, it said Manhattan is more than 640 miles from Topeka and that the Finney County state fishing lake was located on the Kansas State campus. Finney County’s lake is more than 200 miles southwest of Manhattan.

Calhoun said such glaring mistakes scared him. He said it suggested that in the event of an accident, Homeland Security would mistakenly send its crews “to the slopes of the Rocky Mountains.”

“Accidents do happen,” Calhoun said.