Featured Article

Plum Island sits eight miles from Connecticut's shore and is home to a federal biological lab.

It's a Level Three facility that studies highly contagious animal diseases.

The Dept of Homeland Security is currently looking at Plum Island and several sites around the country to build a new lab that would study diseases that have no cure, a Level Four designation.

Attorney General Richard Blumenthal says expanding Plum Island's facility would make it a sitting target for terrorists.

"This new facility would study and experiment with some of the most dangerous pathogens, most infectious diseases that have no known cures or vaccines, many of them not even existing in this country right now. And it would do so in a location that could not be worse in terms of security and environment."

Blumenthal is urging the federal government to consider other remote areas for the lab.  He says Homeland Security's list includes sites in Mississipi, Texas, North Carolina, and Kansas.

He expects the agency will decide on a location for the new bio-lab in November.