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Plum Island Preservation Lawsuit Can Move Forward, Judge Rules

WSHU | By Davis Dunavin
Published January 17, 2018 at 9:50 AM EST
The Plum Island Animal Disease Center on Plum Island off of the east coast of New York's Long Island is shown in 2004.
Ed Betz
/
AP
The Plum Island Animal Disease Center on Plum Island off of the east coast of New York's Long Island is shown in 2004.

A federal judge in New York says environmentalists can move ahead with a lawsuit against the federal government to stop the sale of Plum Island. Seven environmental groups, including Save the Sound, are suing the Department of Homeland Security and the General Services Administration. 

The federal government owns the island off Long Island’s North Fork, which has been used as an animal disease research lab for 60 years. In 2008, they decided to move the lab to Kansas and sell Plum Island to the highest bidder.

Environmentalists say the sale threatens more than 400 federally protected species on the island. They filed a lawsuit in 2016 to block the sale. The federal government asked a judge to dismiss the suit last year. 

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Davis Dunavin
Davis Dunavin loves telling stories, whether on the radio or around the campfire. He fell in love with sound-rich radio storytelling while working as an assistant reporter at KBIA public radio in Columbia, Missouri. Before coming back to radio, he worked in digital journalism as the editor of Newtown Patch. As a freelance reporter, his work for WSHU aired nationally on NPR. Davis is a proud graduate of the University of Missouri School of Journalism; he started in Missouri and ended up in Connecticut, which, he'd like to point out, is the same geographic trajectory taken by Mark Twain.
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