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Wall Experiment Station Renovation
MassDEP's Wall Experiment Station to get $17 million renovation & expansion project to add 35,000 square feet, state-of-the-art equipment
 It was the decade in which Disneyland opened in California, Albert Einstein died, and James Dean was a Rebel Without a Cause. Ann Lederer took over the Ann Landers advice column at the Chicago Sun Times, everyone wanted a coonskin cap, and the Brooklyn Dodgers played the New York Yankees in five World Series, beating them twice. The 1950s also saw the construction of a new building for MassDEP's Laboratory, now called the Wall Experiment Station (WES), located on Shattuck Street along the Merrimac River in Lawrence.
Over the course of the past 50 years the Dodgers moved to LA, Ann Landers passed away, and an even better Disney theme park was built in Florida. However, other than some basic improvements, little had been done to the Lawrence laboratory facility to keep up with the times.
While WES has done a superb job over the years, it's time for a completely new laboratory, as even Einstein would have been hard-pressed to do certain specialized testing which currently must be sent to more adequately equipped private labs. The 21st Century calls for a whole new WES.
The WES lab renovation project was approximately 10 years in the making. But during the last legislative session, former MassDEP Commissioner Robert W. Golledge Jr. succeeded in obtaining a portion of the funding necessary to design and build a new lab; the remainder of funding will come from U.S. EPA, thanks to assistance from Robert Varney, Regional Administrator of EPA New England.
The WES project and renovations will add 35,000 square feet of space to the current facility, and will cost $17 million to design and construct. The new laboratory wing is expected to be completed by the end of 2008, and the original structure will be renovated for office space by the end of 2009.
Designing a 'Green Building'
The new facility will also meet Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Green Building standards. An anticipated savings of approximately 40 percent on heating and cooling costs alone are expected with the new building, and potentially more if funding can be found to install Photovoltaic Cells, which capture 93 percent of available sunlight, adding a Solar Energy source for the building.
The project is a major transformation that will make the lab a state-of-the-art facility, able to conduct the latest in testing procedures. What's most impressive is the fact that the plan will cost millions of dollars less than it could have had MassDEP chosen to build an entirely new facility in a different location. WES will remain in the current facility on Shattuck Street, which is structurally sound. A phase-in approach to designing and building the new space will be used, which will save millions of dollars in project costs.
WES has done remarkably well considering the fact that the facility was built for water and wastewater treatment research, not for the kinds of complex testing it does now. The building was made to draw raw sewerage from an underground pipe to the second floor, where it would then be run through sand filters to the basement. That kind of testing is no longer done at the facility.
Now a multi-purpose laboratory
WES now does a combination of research, certification (including QA/QC) of private laboratories, method development, and analytical work primarily related to enforcement.
In addition to the obvious facility upgrades needed, the 21st century has brought with it new challenges and environmental testing needs. Unlike the 1950s, today MassDEP must tackle issues such as terrorism, energy shortages, and emerging contaminants in our air and water, such as trace levels of pharmaceuticals and personal care products, pesticides and herbicides, and low levels of perchlorate.
The new laboratory will not only upgrade the physical plant, but the project will bring in new equipment that will allow WES staff to test for an expanding suite of chemicals, as well as bring in a Triage lab to screen suspicious materials before they are brought into the main laboratory.
Given the magnitude of improvements needed, the data provided by WES has been consistently reliable, a fact that can mainly be attributed to the dedicated laboratory staff and to Dr. Oscar Pancorbo, who manages the laboratory.
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