U.S. Sen. Jerry Moran met with the Manhattan Area Chamber of Commerce last week to discuss his September visit to the National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility with U.S. Department of Agriculture Deputy Secretary Stephen Vaden.<\/p>\n
The USDA is in a multi-step process of ensuring the facility is secure, a process it hopes to complete in early 2026.<\/p>\n
Moran said he gave the chamber of commerce an update on that effort\u2019s status.<\/p>\n
\u201cI shared with them the progress being made to get NBAF fully functional and my efforts to work with USDA to make certain the facility has the necessary resources to take over the work currently being done at the Plum Island Animal Disease Center,\u201d Moran said in a statement to The Mercury.<\/p>\n
Moran said he also spoke about the \u201cvital partnership between Fort Riley and Manhattan.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWith the Senate\u2019s passage of the FY2026 National Defense Authorization Act, I introduced an amendment to the NDAA to support Irwin Army Community Hospital and bolster its capacity to deliver critical healthcare to service members, their families and veterans,\u201d he said. \u201cWe also discussed opportunities for the Army to focus investments in training, equipment and personnel on Unmanned Aerial Systems technologies, specifically at Fort Riley. Bringing in more troops with these specialized skills to our communities will be a benefit for both the military and the local economy.\u201d<\/p>\n
Toward the end of the meeting, Moran said he discussed with the group how federal resources have been used to support projects at K-State to further community and employment opportunities.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs K-State continues to grow and improve, the city of Manhattan grows along with it,\u201d he said. \u201cI greatly appreciate the time taken by these chamber members to discuss how Manhattan can continue to thrive as a community.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"U.S. Sen. Jerry Moran met with the Manhattan Area Chamber of Commerce last week to discuss his September…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7204,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[6402,609,75,84,83,6401,9,24,63,87,901],"class_list":["post-7203","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-manhattan","tag-federal-government-of-the-united-states","tag-government","tag-manhattan","tag-manhattan-headlines","tag-manhattan-news","tag-national-bio-and-agro-defense-facility","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-politics","tag-united-states"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7203","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7203"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7203\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7204"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7203"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7203"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7203"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}