Officials at the University’s Savannah River Ecology Laboratory say the surrounding community will lose an asset as the lab is forced to scale back its on-site research operations.

The lab’s financial crisis, sparked this summer when the U.S. Department of Energy decided to decrease the lab’s funding by about $4 million, and already has forced the layoff of about 40 employees, including co-director Carl Strojan. More layoffs are expected in the near future, forcing many remaining researchers to move their research to the main campus.

“There’s nobody that will step in and replace that kind of work that we do. I don’t know how that’s going to get resolved,” Strojan said. “The site still has a need for the work.”

The lab often is referred to as a watchdog of the Savannah River Site, a DOE-managed nuclear processing facility near Aiken, S.C., built during the Cold War. Since its inception in 1951, SREL has published more than 3,000 peer-reviewed articles.

Jim Jiusty, a DOE spokesperson, said in a phone interview that the perception of the lab as an oversight facility is not accurate.

“They had no regulatory authority in the work they did,” he said. “There would be no impact on the surrounding community” if the lab closed.

The function of SREL, Jiusty said, has been to conduct independent research requested by DOE, much of which has little or no bearing on SRS. The research SREL provided for DOE reports can still be obtained through funding on a task-by-task basis either to SREL or other independent research facilities, he said.

Former SREL director Paul Bertsch, who is now a professor and senior researcher at the lab, said contaminated tracts of land and increased handling of plutonium at SRS will create an increased need for SREL in the future.

“In my view, SREL might be more important now than it has been since its start-up,” he said.

Another feature of the lab is its community outreach. School groups frequently toured the facility to learn about the animals that made their home there.

“The outreach program will be the biggest loss to the community,” Jiusty said. The researchers “were great ambassadors to the study of the environment.”

Initially, officials suggested some of the animals might have to be euthanized if the lab’s funding were abruptly cut, but Strojan said that is unlikely.

“The people here are trying to work to send them on to other places,” he said.

Bertsch said the on-going congressional investigation into the lab will likely fall in favor of SREL, but said any restoration in funding might come too late.

“We have a tremendous group here, a wonderful group of scientists,” he said. “To try to recreate it would be difficult.”