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Several actions were taken in anticipation of the merger with U.S. Geological Survey and concomitant withdrawal from a support relationship with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for management of Center lands. These included:

• A complete redraft of the Center's Safety and Emergency Preparedness Plan to bring the Center into compliance with pertinent Departmental and Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHA) regulations.
• Development and implementation of a comprehensive land use plan to guide management activities on the 640-acre Jamestown headquarters site.

Much time was spent in efforts to fine-tune our Bureau Information Needs process, which guides our priority-setting mechanisms for new research throughout the division. We now have a regular schedule for meeting with all Interior Bureaus involved in management of Federal lands.

A long-term goal of facilities management at the Center has been the development of sufficient indoor space to store vehicles and equipment over winter, space to permit continued work on invertebrates and plants during the winter months, and development of an isolation facility for work on collected vertebrate specimens, odoriferous samples, and the like. A subsidiary goal has been to make these spaces more useful by connecting them to facilitate transit in winter, to upgrade insulation, doors and windows to save on heating costs and increase comfort, and to increase access to buildings for staff by developing parking areas and winter vehicle plug-in sites.

Our major goal has been met by development of a warm storage building for research equipment, our controlled burning fire truck, and the snow plows and front-end loaders used to clear our roads in winter; development of the Riverside Aquatic Laboratory--4,000 sq. ft of indoor work stations, offices, storage, and experiment rooms; and by modification of the old water plant by adding a walk-in freezer, stainless steel work surfaces, autopsy tables, cabinets, and benches for work with odoriferous materials.

Other work has included terracing and contouring to deal with flooding problems at several buildings; innovations to improve utilization of equipment storage facilities; construction of a new septic system at the Woodworth Field Station; roof replacement on the old water plant, Administration, and Riverside buildings; construction of a covered walkway between Riverside and the new Aquatics Laboratory; expansion of the Riverside parking lot; repaving of parking lots and major sections of Center roadways; design, archaeological surveys, and other preparations for a combined dormitory-laboratory building to be built in 1997; and improvements to electrical, insulation, and heating/cooling systems.