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internal competitive pressure to produce uniformly high research results.

By 1981, it was clear that insufficient progress had been made in implementing many of the recommendations from the 1979 review, and that future budgetary uncertainties dictated a new approach to the laboratory operations.

The Smithsonian had, since 1965, maintained a field biology station on the Rhode River estuary of the Chesapeake Bay, at Edgewater, Maryland, where ecological investigations at the whole organism level offered a complementary approach to the cellular level work of the Rockville laboratory. An external panel was therefore convened in 1982 to assess the viability of merging the two Smithsonian bureaus into one facility.

This second committee recommended that the Edgewater and Rockville facilities be merged to produce a larger scientific staff capable of broader interaction, and to perform research at both the whole organism and cellular levels. The approach appeared to be in line with developments in the broader Smithsonian community. The key to such a merger would be the success in achieving a physical integration of activities at the Rhode River site in a single laboratory building. The lease on the Rockville laboratory expires in 1990, and the renewal costs appeared to be prohibitive, necessitating an eventual transfer of operations.

On July 1, 1983, the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center was created and administered as a unified organization, although at separate sites. Master planning activities immediately commenced to assess the feasibility of consolidating the two facilities in a single new building at the Rhode River site. By the fall of 1984, it became apparent that