The University of Hawai'i-Manoa is asking the National Institutes of Health for permission to consider alternate sites for a regional biosafety laboratory because of uncertainty about proposed infrastructure work on Waimano Ridge.

The NIH awarded the university a $25 million grant last year to build a regional biosafety lab on Waimano Ridge as part of a national network of nine planned Level-3 biocontainment laboratories and two national biocontainment labs to test for avian flu, dengue fever and other viruses.

The lab in Hawai'i must be built by 2010, said Gregg Takayama, spokesman for UH's John A. Burns School of Medicine.

The proposed lab would be a one-story, stand-alone facility of more than 65,000 square feet, custom-built to ensure safety.

"The UH is asking NIH for permission to consider alternate sites for the RBL because the Waimano site would require an estimated $38 million in infrastructure upgrades (new roadways, water/sewer improvements) before the RBL could be built there," Takayama said. "There's concern over whether the infrastructure work can be funded and completed in time for the NIH's deadline of 2010 for the RBL to begin operations."

The alternate site under most serious consideration is in Kaka'ako on the new UH medical school campus.

"We're still awaiting word from the NIH as to whether they will allow us to change the location of the RBL, so nothing definite has been decided yet," Takayama said.

The preferred development scheme of the Waimano Ridge Master Plan prepared for the state Department of Health by CDC International includes a new city emergency medical services facility, expanded state Department of Land & Natural Resources conservation enforcement base yard and a new DLNR engineering base yard, expanded Department of Public Safety training academy and the regional biosafety lab. Existing facilities to remain there are the state Department of Health laboratory and the Health Department's Juvenile Sex Offender Treatment facility.

Dr. Duane Gubler, director of the Asia-Pacific Institute of Tropical Medicine & Infectious Diseases, said last year that a regional biosafety lab is needed here because Hawai'i does not have adequate capability to detect, respond or prevent introduced infectious diseases.

Reach Rod Ohira at rohira@honoluluadvertiser.com.