When cutting-edge research labs get old, they face a new kind of challenge

Put expensive high-tech scientific equipment in a former citrus packing house more than 60 years old, throw in an overworked air conditioner, a corroding foundation, and the sticky Central Florida climate, and you’ve got problems.  The University of Florida’s Citrus Research and Education Center is doing cutting-edge work to find cures for new biological threats to the U.S. citrus crop, but its researchers and staff housed in some of the facility’s older buildings are also waging a more immediate fight against bugs, rodents and other fauna that thrive in the muggy summer heat. In one lab in the packing house, traps for mice and insects sometimes lie alongside microscopes and testing equipment; staffers keep a large supply of bleach on hand to clean mold off walls, vents and even dishes used to test samples. Often, it’s a losing fight. But daily life in this shambling concrete packing house is symptomatic of another problem, one that cuts across the landscape of federally funded research: Maintaining its infrastructure. Most people think of innovation as requiring shiny new equipment, which it often does, but it also comes with the far more mundane requirement of clean, functional buildings to house it. Years of federal belt-tightening have starved laboratories of funding for routine maintenance, and the deterioration has reached the point that some researchers say the nation's ability to conduct cutting-edge science is being damaged. The Treasury Department estimates that the government-wide backlog of deferred maintenance on federal property is $185 billion — a figure that accounts for office buildings, National Parks, military installations and everything between. The Defense Department accounts for $135 billion of that, while the Interior Department has a $15.4 billion backlog for upkeep, according to 2016 financial statements. And institutions that receive federal research grants are in the same situation. Land-grant university agriculture colleges, which were created by Congress and get federal funding to address key questions in farming, have a more than $9 billion maintenance backlog nationally.