Three months after a ribbon cutting and two months after the projected opening date, the state’s new public health laboratory in Colchester is still offline.
The $31 million state-of-the-art laboratory is co-located with the University of Vermont College of Medicine’s Colchester Research Facility, and is expected to prompt innovation in fields such as infectious disease control and environmental contamination, officials say.
The Health Department currently has two small specialized biosafety labs. The new facility will have five larger labs for the same purpose.
The space will be used for a range of purposes, from testing for anthrax and pertussis, to testing groundwater suspected of contamination. In addition to screening mosquitoes for West Nile and Eastern Equine Encephalitis, the facility will allow testing of other mosquito-borne diseases that are not currently monitored.
At the October ribbon cutting, Department of Health officials said the lab would start operations in mid-November, but now acting Commissioner Tracy Dolan says the lab has not completed “failure scenario tests.”
“We continue to work with our state and design partners and hope to complete the move in February or March,” she added.
The old lab continues to operate and take specimens, according to Nancy Erikson, a spokeswoman for the department.
“Failure scenario tests are done to confirm for us that if a critical system, such as an exhaust system, fails, due to failure of redundant air supply or redundant exhaust system, loss of power, or some other reason, the air pressure remains negative so that the environment in which people are working is not contaminated,” Dolan said.
The testing process is complex and there is “no way to accurately anticipate the amount of time necessary to accomplish the failure scenarios,” said Mike Kuhn, project architect for the department.
Money for the testing process was included in the original construction costs, Kuhn said, and he does not anticipate the protracted opening to cost the state additional funds.
