The Department of Homeland Security kicked off a series of public hearings on its plan to replace its Plum Island Animal Disease Center on Thursday, emphasizing some familiar points: no site decisions are even close to final, and the department doesn’t want to put the facility where the public doesn’t want it.

Among the agency and congressional staff who comprised most of the small audience were a handful of people from two of the areas identified as possibilities for a new National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility (NBAF). And if DHS is looking to find out where it’s unwelcome, “That’s my job,” said Gray Thrasher, of Athens, Ga.

Thrasher and his wife, Kathy Prescott, made the trip to Washington specifically to speak about the NBAF, and plan on doing so again when DHS gives its presentation in their hometown Aug. 14.

“We will fight you every step of the way,” said Thrasher. Prescott challenged several aspects of the 1,000 page draft environmental impact statement DHS put together for the six potential NBAF sites, including its assertion that Athens has a sufficient water supply.

They were joined by Suzanne Moody Smith and Judy Winters, of Granville County, N.C., another candidate mentioned in the draft statement, who handed over a petition opposing the NBAF with 4,200 signatures.

Replacing New York’s Plum Island lab with the NBAF has proved a controversial topic since earlier this year, when Democratic leaders on the House Energy and Commerce Committee voiced concern over it. The lab is the only facility in America that studies foot-and-mouth, an animal-only disease that can ravage livestock populations and cause serious economic harm due to how contagious it is. Majority members of the committee backed building a new site on the island, located in Long Island Sound, instead of DHS opting for one of the five other sites in Georgia, Kansas, Mississippi, North Carolina and Texas — all on the mainland.

DHS officials said they expected to hear from those opposed to having the NBAF built in their community during Thursday’s public meeting.

“It’s part of the process,” said Office of National Labs Director James Johnson, who will give the same presentation seven more times nationwide in the coming months. “We definitely want a site where we’re welcome. That’s why we’re engaging in public hearings and outreach.”

The presentation basically consisted of officials breaking down key points in the draft environmental impact statement. Chuck Pergler, of Dow-Corning, which prepared the statement for DHS, stressed that the information it contains is fair and accurate.

“The Dow-Corning team has no vested investment in whether the NBAF is built or not,” he said. “The data is the data.”

Pergler said the likelihood of serious consequences stemming from a foot-and-mouth outbreak at Plum Island would be slightly lower than the inland locations because of its isolation and lack of a livestock population to spread the disease. He also said any facility could be made safe through careful design.

After the presentation, DHS Science and Technology Directorate Spokesman John Verrico called the NBAF a “classic NIMBY” — Not In My Back Yard. While the NBAF is needed, people hear that there will be contagious diseases studied there, and the concept is frightening, he said.

“This type of thing happens with lots of development projects, usually having to do with people’s inherent fear of the unknown,” he said. “There’s a lot that they should understand about this project.

Thrasher disputed the NIMBY label, though.

“We don’t think it should be on the mainland because the release of foot-and-mouth would be a catastrophic event,” he said. “We don’t want it in our community. But we don’t want it anywhere else, either.”

Prescott said she and her husband started an organization called For Athens Quality of Life after reading about the NBAF plan in an alternative weekly paper. She said “scoping meetings” held in July 2007 were not well-publicized, so they did not attend. Although Athens, home of the University of Georgia, does not have a large livestock population, Prescott said foot-and-mouth, along with human-affecting diseases that would be studied at the NBAF, still concern her.

Although those who spoke at Thursday’s meeting said their communities don’t want the NBAF, congressional and state representatives from potential sites, along with livestock organizations like the Kansas Farm Bureau, are already pushing to bring the facility to their areas. The visitors from both Georgia and North Carolina say their elected representatives are going against the will of the people.

“I feel like we’re working against them,” Moody Smith said. “Or, more correctly, they’re working against their constituents.”

Moody Smith and Winters are members of their own opposition group, Granville Non-Violent Action Team or GNAT. She said the group plans to show up at the Butner, N.C., public meeting, scheduled for later this month.

Rob Margetta can be reached at rmargetta@cq.com.