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[[underlined]] Status Reports [[/underlined]]

The Secretary outlined the following reports, each of which had been distributed in advance of the meeting.

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[[underlined]] Merger of the Radiation Biology Laboratory and the Chesapeake Bay Center for Environmental Studies [[/underlined]]

The Smithsonian Institution has pioneered in long-term studies and monitoring the environment.  It is one of the few Federally-funded organizations equipped to sustain such work and has thus assumed a special responsibility to continue and improve its efforst in this direction.  The Radiation Biology Laboratory and the Chesapeake Bay Center for Environmental Studies are two of the Institution's science bureaus that have carried out such research and monitoring since their inception.  As reported in the March 1983 [[underlined]] Newsletter to the Regents [[/underlined]] , the expiration of the Laboratory's current lease in January 1990 and a review last year of the research at both the Laboratory and the Center have combined to focus the Smithsonian's attention on the future of these two smallest science bureaus.

Should the Laboratory need to vacate its Rockville facility in 1990, it could readily move to a university setting as an independent entity.  Both Duke University and the University of Maryland have offered to finance a new laboratory should it move to their campuses.  Such a laboratory, approximately 60,000 square feet (the Laboratory now uses 45,000 square feet), would cost about $10 million in 1983 dollars.  Under this arrangement, the Institution would be charged about $1 million rent for ten to twelve years, by which time the building would be amortized and the rent would drop to cover essential services.  The University would then own a laboratory