08.nov.08
Online Athens
Lee Shearer
http://www.onlineathens.com/stories/110908/new_353876020.shtml
The University of Georgia College of Veterinary Medicine didn't inform a community liaison committee about potentially serious leaks in a high-security biocontainment building until reporters learned about the leaks.
The leaks flooded a laboratory in UGA's new Animal Health Research Center, a lab off East Campus Road that is designed to let researchers work safely with dangerous animal diseases that also can infect people.
Water mixed with animal waste leaked from a high-security, large-animal lab into a basement, but the contaminated water never seeped outside the building and never posed a health threat to people, UGA officials said. The large-animal laboratory is closed until the problems that caused the leaks are fixed, but the rest of the building remains open.
One leak happened Sept. 23 and another Oct. 2, but members of the liaison committee didn't learn of the problems until Oct. 6, after the Athens Banner-Herald asked vet school officials about the leaks, according to e-mails and other documents the university released under an open records request.
"The mission of this committee is to establish and maintain trust and confidence among the scientists associated with the Animal Health Research Center, the University of Georgia community, and the citizens of Athens-Clarke County," according to the Web site for the lab, called the AHRC (pronounced "ark").
But keeping the committee in the dark is no way to build trust, Pat Allen, UGA director of community relations, told research Vice President David Lee. Allen chairs the community liaison committee.
Allen was able to tell committee members about the overflows before they read about them in a newspaper, but just barely, he told Lee in an Oct. 7 e-mail that also went to Dean Sheila Allen and other vet school administrators.