The new building was made possible by an $18 million gift from Gary Comer and the Comer Science and Education Foundation. Columbia Trustee Gerry Lenfest also made a substantial gift in support of the new facility.

Site selection and building design took into consideration the aesthetics of the scenic location as well as the rural nature of the campus and surrounding community. Construction plans call for a two-story, 63,000 square-foot building that will house Lamont-Doherty's Geochemistry Division, which is currently scattered among different buildings on campus. It will contain more than 70 offices and nearly 30 laboratories for scientists, students and support staff. A ribbon-cutting is scheduled for November 2007.

The laboratory building will be designed to meet the best practices described in the EPA's Labs21 Approach, a voluntary program sponsored by the Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Department of Energy to improve the energy efficiency and environmental performance of laboratories. Labs21 partners commit to:

• Employ a range of energy and water efficiency strategies.
• Measure energy and water consumption and track emission reductions.
• Evaluate on-site power generation, combined heat and power technologies, and renewable power purchases.
• Build with “green” construction materials.
• Promote energy and water efficiency efforts.
• Expand the improvement effort beyond the laboratory building.

A new 24,000 square-foot parking lot, which is replacing a lot lost to the new construction, incorporates porous pavement on top of a groundwater infiltration bed. The lot, now completed, is expected to reduce or eliminate storm runoff from the site. Rain washing off of a conventional, impervious asphalt surface can carry oil, grit and other unwanted materials into local sewers or surrounding water bodies. A porous surface, however, permits rain to pass through the pavement to a gravel storage bed beneath. Over time, this water will gradually percolate into the ground, where many of the impurities will be filtered out or captured by sub-surface geology and soils.

“It is going to capture virtually every drop of rainfall that will hit it,” said Daniel Weibel, an engineer from Cahill in charge of the project. “That's what it was designed to do. Right up to the 100-year storm.” The only drawback to the technology is that it requires slightly more attention than a traditional paved surface. In order to prevent it from becoming clogged, the pavement will have to be vacuumed twice a year.

Taken together, all the technologies used in the construction of the new geochemistry research laboratories will reduce emissions, streamline energy and water usage, and decrease overall costs—all while preserving the integrity of the laboratory's mission and creating a visually striking, extremely functional building.

(Information for this article was supplied by Ken Kostel of the Earth Institute.)