While celebration was in order, Tom Thornton told the Kansas Bioscience Authority board of directors that he wasn’t yet ready for “dancing in the street.”

Instead, Thornton, president of the authority, sees much work ahead to ensure Manhattan is chosen as the site for a $450 million federal lab.

“We are not letting our guard down. We are continuing to press our case that Manhattan is the community,” Thornton said Thursday.

The Department of Homeland Security released a draft report on Dec. 3 recommending the Kansas location out of four other states for its National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility, or NBAF.

The Kansas Bioscience Authority has played a large role in rallying state support for the facility, which would bring 1,500 construction jobs and employ 300 people with an annual payroll of $25 million to $30 million.

At Thursday’s board meeting in Olathe, Thornton reminded the directors that the process was not quite over.

Today, the Department of Homeland Security is expected to publish in the federal register the final environmental impact statement on the project. A waiting period of 30 days will follow, allowing an opportunity for comments to be submitted. At the end of those 30 days, the Department of Homeland Security should issue its final decision.

Leaders from other potential NBAF sites have raised the possibility of legal challenges to the department’s recommendation.

Thornton said the decision to name Manhattan as a preferred alternative was a unanimous one. The Kansas site ranked first in four of six criteria.

“Those are very important points to make because there may or may not be challenges,” Thornton said.

Advocacy for the project must continue, Thornton said, to ensure that it is a priority for President-elect Barack Obama and that funds to start building the lab are included in the administration’s 2010 budget.