Bioterrorism tests spark fears along Kansas border
NEWKIRK — Pass under the abandoned school’s stone archway and rows of trees will lead, eventually, to the massive Hayworth Hall, its 134-yearold Colonial Revival limestone rising three stories just south of the Kansas border.
It is the centerpiece of an architectural anomaly; a somewhat preserved ghost town, abandoned 37 years ago. Thirty or so stone buildings, including an apartment complex, sit unoccupied and largely untouched.
It is here, at what was once the Chilocco Indian Agricultural School — a “home and haven to some, reformatory and prison to others,” in the words of the Oklahoma Historical Society — that government tests will be conducted next year.
To residents on both sides of the state line, those tests seem like a low-budget horror film come to life. Federal agents in protective gear. A biological attack simulation. An abandoned Indian site. And a slow trickle of information that can’t keep pace with the rumors and fears.
“I think most people are worried and concerned with what they’re doing up there,” said Jane Thomas, city manager
Newkirk, the nearest town.
“Eighty percent are against it. Probably 85 to 90 percent, actually," said Cody Griesel, editor of the Newkirk Herald Journal, which first reported the story.
Scientists both within the Department of Homeland Security and outside of it say those concerns are unwarranted.
"I’m a little surprised the work that we’re doing has stirred up as much feedback as we’ve gotten," said Lloyd Hough, a general biological scientist at Homeland Security and the project's manager.
Products to be spread at Chilocco include a fertilizer, a bacterium used in organic farming and a common chemical found in everything from sunscreen to toothpaste to Krispy Kreme products.
“If people want to oppose this, they should also oppose doughnuts and toothpaste,” said Dr. Kitty Cardwell, director of the National Institute of Microbial Forensics & Food and Agricultural Biosecurity at Oklahoma State University.
The tests
When a dangerous chemical has been released— whether by terrorism, natural disaster or human error — the common refrain from public officials is: stay inside. Homeland Security would like to understand for how long that's a safe instruction.
A ghost town like Chilocco, more than half a mile from any occupied home, is a perfect place to test that.
“This is ideal, really. It’s far from anything," Cardwell said. "It’s like a town but there’s nobody in it."
Homeland Security renovated two residential buildings on the campus to mimic modern homes, adding a heating and cooling system, repairing roofs, fixing windows and doors. On non-windy days in January and February, when no farmers are working nearby, government scientists will release particles outside the two buildings and track the extent to which they enter residences. The tests will then be repeated in June and July.
The powders released will contain titanium dioxide, a common ingredient in toothpaste, paints, foods and medicine; urea, a fertilizer and the main chemical found in human urine; and a bacteria: bacillus thuringiensis, a naturally occurring biological material often used in organic gardening.
“The materials we’re working with are generally regarded as safe," Hough said. "They’re nontoxic, they’re nonhazardous. I would not have any issues working with them and, in fact, if you walk around your home, you find a lot of materials that have much more dire and extreme hazard warnings."
Homeland Security's plans for Chilocco are outlined in a 58-page environmental assessment. Critics of the tests have seized ona detail — found on page 17 — that they say proves the tests are dangerous: "Personnel conducting the release will be outfitted in personal protective equipment ... such as Tyvek suits, masks and gloves."
Cardwell says the protection is likely unnecessary, a better-safe-than-sorry precaution for those dealing directly with the powders. The public needs no such gear, she said.
"We’re really trying to protect the people who are working with the liquid materials before they’re sprayed, from accidental splashes that might get in their eye or get on their skin and cause a little bit of irritation," Hough explained.
Kenny Naylor, director of the Consumer Protection Services Division of the Oklahoma Department of Agriculture, Food and Forestry, said his department was contacted by Homeland Security and even granted the federal agency a permit for the tests. The state agency has no objections to the experiments, he said.
Origins
The outcry began, innocuously enough, with a legal notice in the local newspaper, a commonality in towns big and small across the country. Homeland Security was notifying Newkirk of some upcoming tests.
Griesel, the Newkirk Herald Journal editor, recognized the public notice’s news value and chose not to bury it in the back of his weekly newspaper with other notices. Instead, it was a front-page story: “DHS plans testing at Chilocco campus.”
“The first we learned of it was in the paper,” Thomas said, since the city was not notified of the tests, which will occur just outside city limits. “It was concerning, not knowing exactly what’s happening up there or what they’re going to be doing.”
The City of Newkirk’s Facebook page, which is followed by about 400 people in this town of 2,300, typically alerts residents to water line construction or holiday closures or boil orders. On Nov. 8, the city instead posted an unusual call to action.
“Headline in Newkirk paper: Homeland Security to test penetration of biological weapons into homes and buildings at Chilocco,” it read. There was an email and mailing address for the Department of Homeland Security. “Please send your comments not to allow this type of testing in our area.”
Facebook posts spread beyond the town limits and across the state line, where Arkansas City, Kansas, residents began to ask their own questions and raise their own concerns. An online petition launched from Arkansas City, which is six miles north of the Chilocco campus, garnered a thousand signatures a day in its first week.
“I do not want everyone to be poisoned by these tests,” wrote one signatory, “and I do not want our environment to be damaged and the ecology destroyed.”
“I’m signing because this should not be tested around my children or my homes or my community,” wrote another.
The petition and those who signed it voiced a deep distrust in the federal government’s ability to fully understand the ramifications of its own actions. There were comparisons to Agent Orange, the herbicide dumped on Vietnam. The government has been either naive or secretive about the tests' longterm effects, critics say.
One man trying to defuse concerns in Arkansas City is Tom Langer, who oversees a city and county health department on the Kansas side of the state line.
"It truthfully is not nefarious," he said of the test. "I see people anxious or worrying. I don’t want them to fear. If there was something nefarious, I would be the one standing on the courthouse steps, screaming at the top of my lungs."
Griesel writes for newspapers in Newkirk and Arkansas City. He said the Homeland Security tests raised fears the government was conducting other experiments in the area without warning, to the detriment of nearby livestock, crops and birds. The agency's repeated claims that the chemicals are nonhazardous and nontoxic have done little to reassure residents.
“They’re just not buying it," Griesel said. "People around here have researched the chemicals. They're not buying it."
What’s next
On Wednesday, a city meeting to discuss the tests was thrice moved to larger venues as the expected crowd size swelled. Another meeting is planned for Nov. 27.
Chilocco is managed by five Native American tribes, known collectively as the Council on Confederated Chilocco Tribes, which previously signed off on the Homeland Security tests but have since requested further meetings to discuss their environmental and human impact. Hough, the project manager, said he is happy to meet again with the tribes.
U.S. Rep. Frank Lucas, a Republican who represents Newkirk and surrounding Kay County, said he has received some calls from concerned constituents. He is in touch with Homeland Security regarding safety precautions for the tests, he says, and recommends residents continue to voice their opinions to the agency.
"I understand that residents in the Newkirk area are concerned, and my staff will work with federal, state, and tribal officials to learn more about the implications of the test," Lucas said.
When conducting the tests, Homeland Security will partner with University Multispectral Laboratories, an Oklahoma State University facility in nearby Ponca City. Hough and Cardwell, the OSU scientist, say the tests are not only safe but a compliment to OSU's expertise in anti-terrorism research.
“It’s as safe as it can be," said Cardwell. "It’s well thought out and it’s really for everyone’s benefit — for their protection.”