Like generations of technicians before him at the Forest Products Laboratory, Marc Joyal is testing wood to see how much pressure it can take before it buckles.
On a recent morning, he uses a nearly 70-year-old device called a test frame to apply tens of thousands of pounds of pressure to a piece of pine. It has been exposed to high temperatures and humidity; the idea is to see how it would hold up if used in a building in the desert, or in a sweaty factory.
The pine 2-by-4 withstands 25,000 pounds before emitting smoke and revealing its first crack.
These days, the lab itself is under a lot of pressure, too. After a visit last year by officials from the lab's parent organization, the U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service, it is now under orders to cut its work force from 225 to 140 by 2008. After two rounds of buyouts, the head count is now 190.
"The work doesn't decrease. That means everyone has to do more," said Bill Nelson, project leader for the engineering mechanics and remote sensing lab. "That's government."
But some are worried the famous lab can't withstand the cuts and continue to serve its mission as the nation's primary unbiased source of information on wood products.
Budgets in recent years have been shrinking. The Forest Service has budgeted $19.4 million for the lab for the upcoming fiscal year, down from $19.8 million for the current year and down from $21.6 million in 2004. The cost savings from the reduced number of employees will go largely toward operation costs, such as supplies, said lab spokesman George Couch.
At the same time, the Forest Service has put in the federal budget a $45 million plan to modernize the lab's facilities. The "test frame" that Joyal used on the pine 2-by-4 might finally be replaced, Nelson said. Much of the new equipment requires less manpower to run them, Nelson noted.
"Morale is quite bad," said Mark Davis, an analytical chemist at the lab, and chief steward at the National Federation of Federal Employees Local 276, the union representing lab workers. "We would lose our human infrastructure at the same time we are making all these investments in the physical infrastructure. Sometimes you just want to sit and cry."
The Forest Products Laboratory, located near Old University Avenue and the UW Hospital, opened in 1910. This was where, on that very test frame, corrugated cardboard was developed during World War II. Workers here created long-life railroad ties, and found ways to yield more lumber per log.
The lab has traditionally focused on improving production for commodity products like printing and writing papers, newsprint, liner board and 2-by-4s, said Ted Wegner, assistant director of the laboratory.
In more recent years, they helped workers use non-invasive methods to renovate the USS Constitution, better known as Old Ironsides, as it sat in Boston Harbor. They found ways to make peel-off postage stamps recyclable, allowing much more office waste to be recycled.
And, through a demonstration house in the lab's front yard, they're working with industry to develop new deck materials, hail-resistant shingles, and ways to deal with mold problems in energy-efficient homes.
One major project in recent years, however, illustrates the quandary in which the lab finds itself, Wegner said. Researchers worked on removing chlorine compounds from the bleaching process of paper. But it didn't get used, he said. The industry has become increasingly resistant to change, now that profits have become so low in the new global economy, Wegner said.
"Even if you developed new technologies, they tend to sit on the shelf. Why should we be putting our effort into those things that are not going to pay off?" Wegner said.
So things have changed. There is still some work on commodity products, but the lab has a greater emphasis on nanotechnology, the science of using small particles to create stronger products. Nanotechnology materials could potentially be harvested from trees, Wegner said. Cellulose could someday replace metals and ceramics as a manufacturing material, he said.
"You have to reinvent yourself from time to time," he said.
Lab officials say that with budgets sagging, there will also need to be more partnerships with private industry, and other entities that provide grant money, like universities.
For instance, in recent years, the lab has partnered with a New York biotechnology company on a project to convert xylose, a sugar found in wood, into ethanol fuel and xylitol food sweetener. And it has worked with a Massachusetts company to create wood reinforced with fiberglass.
Private industry has been using discoveries from the lab since it first opened, Wegner said. But since the Technology Transfer Act of 1986, federal labs like Forest Products have been allowed to work directly with industry to create new products. The partnerships help the lab "make sure we keep our program relevant," he said.
But Melissa Baumann, president of Local 276 and a research chemist at the lab, said the shift toward working directly with industry raises important concerns.
"I have always viewed myself and employees here as employees of the government and the country. I do at times have concerns we chase the dollars from private industry without looking back and saying, 'What are the significant wood utilization questions facing this country?' " Baumann said. "What was the market reason for putting a man on the moon? That's what government research can do that private industry never will -big science questions, serious questions facing society and our country, not just new widgets."
The lab has also worked to re-establish its relations with a granting institution of a different sort: the U.S. military. The lab did a lot of work in the World War II effort, but there hadn't been much contact since then, said Bob Falk, a research engineer.
"We're trying to make an effort to renew that relationship," Falk said. He is helping the military with deconstruction of buildings on its closed bases. The old lumber can be used in new construction, he said. "There are a lot of ways we could help."
Much of the old-growth wood from military bases has lead paint on it. That can be recycled twice: the paint can be "planed" off and reused by the lead industry, and the wood below can be reused in construction, he said.
Falk is one of four workers at the lab who put together a book on building safe decks 10 year ago. Falk said the budget cutbacks have meant he's not able to do as much work with decks as he would like.
"There's a lot of expertise here, but we're spread much more thin," Falk said.
Davis said there is some anxiety about possible layoffs, although lab officials said the federal government would need to give the lab the authority to downsize, and hasn't done that. Generally, if a Forest Service lab wants to trim its payroll beyond offering buyouts, employees are given an opportunity to move elsewhere, if such an opportunity exists.
No matter what fate awaits the workers, things are less pleasant now than they were a few years back, Davis said.
"The Forest Service calls its employees family. Employees here don't feel like family, they feel more like ballast," he said.The Capital Times
