City of Berkeley, Land of Labs

Believing all corporate claims of benefits while ignoring citizen and civil society calls for risk assessment, oversight, and transparency, Berkeley’s City Council last week voted unanimously to alter zoning laws so as to facilitate siting biolabs in the city. This follows the Council’s move last month to provide tax exemptions to various research and development companies - despite recent reports of a surplus of biolabs in Berkeley and throughout the SF Bay Area.

The City Council permits research and development (R & D) labs in areas around U.C. Berkeley, including the University Avenue commercial corridor, North Shattuck Avenue, Telegraph Avenue and downtown. Although projects above 20,000 require an Administrative Use Permit, projects under 20,000 square feet require only an administratively approved Zoning Certificate. It also has decreased restrictions where labs using Biosafety Level 2 (BSL 2) organisms can locate.

Operating to convenience UC Berkeley and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, the City Council permits labs to be sited next to homes, restaurants, shops, and schools.

The City Council disallowed the siting of the riskiest Biosafety Level labs, BSL 3 and BSL 4 labs. But it failed to acknowledge or address the ways in which Federal guidelines do not carry the force of law, even for Biosafety Level 1 and 2 labs – even while the City Council’s measures facilitate the expanded siting of such labs. Federal oversight operates within a framework of science custom and practice that is self-regulating. Guidelines concerning lab mishaps rely on self-reporting and do not carry the force of law. This is made more problematic by the fact that federal guidelines do not apply to non-federally funded projects. Will the City Council be tracking whether projects are governmentally or privately funded?

Moreover, the City Council moved to relax biosafety standards even more, to make Berkeley competitive with other cities. This relaxation will be limited to biolabs sited in the Mixed Use/Light Industrial areas in West Berkeley. Still, there are people who live in West Berkeley, typically of lower income than those living elsewhere in Berkeley, and people patronize eateries and shops in the area. Why two standards of biosafety depending on where you live? Providing different biosafety level standards in different areas is an indication of how proposed changes make things less safe, not safer and, it would seem, inequitably so.

In a final flourish supporting the unbridled expansion of biolabs throughout the city, the City Council, ipso facto, exempted the proposed Zoning Ordinance amendments from triggering CEQA (California Environmental Quality Act) processes.

Like his colleagues, Councilmember Ben Bartlett supports measures expanding biolab development. But he’s also recognized the need for adequate oversight. Staffing shortages in the city , he recently analogized, were responsible for almost half the city’s restaurants going uninspected in 2023. Councilmember Mark Humbert attempted to reassure, “It may sound glib, but I think it’s actually fair to say a restaurant with poor safety poses more of a risk than a lab working with BSL 1 and 2 agents.”

Biolab Watch agrees with Councilmember Humbert: his comment does sound glib.

The City Council can do better than blindly accepting industry reassurances about lab safety. Operating independently of the vested interests who have advised them, councilmembers can engage the facts and analysis they’ve avoided, including how

R & D projects will affect social justice and social ethics.

Berkeley’s new mayor, Adena Ishii, has pledged to make Berkeley a progressive beacon. Will this pledge envision a progressive city committed to enabling democratic participation in the oversight of technological R & D? We call upon the Mayor to secure transparency, oversight, and public safety and stop the oligarchic roll-out of benefits to corporate interests.