150 



undertaken while I served on the staff of the Senate Committee on 

 Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry Committee, echoes Dr. Kloek's 

 testimony. 



Facilities are falling apart. In preparation for the 1990 

 farm bill, the Senate and House Agriculture Committees requested an 

 estimate from USOA for renovating ARS facilities to meet basic 

 health and safety regulations (e.g., new fume hoods in the 

 laboratories) and to make the minimum repairs necessary to keep the 

 facilities fully functioning. Little has been done to fix these 

 facilities since this data request. Thus the USDA figures for 

 Fiscal Year 1990 still provide an accurate and shocking glimpse of 

 a decaying facilities system. 



USDA estimated that ARS would have to spend an additional 76 

 cents for every dollar spent on research to repair facilities. As 

 Dr. Kloek pointed out, the total cost for repairs at the time of 

 the estimate was $348,434,000 — a staggering sum considering that 

 the total operating budget for ARS that same year was $456,434,000. 



The needed repairs are not limited to just a handful of 

 facilities. To the contrary, USDA indicated that in 1990 nearly 80 

 percent of all sites required basic repairs and safety adjustments. 

 The estimated repair, maintenance, and .renovation costs were 

 greater than the annual research budget at 21 sites and more than 

 double the annual research budget at 13 sites, including five 

 locations within one state. 



Most of the attention on facilities repairs has been directed 

 at ARS. But university facilities are also showing the signs of 

 age. In 1988, the National Science Foundation reported that 20 

 percent of existing university agricultural research space needed 

 major repair or renovation; an additional 26 percent required 

 limited repair or renovation. 



