Ayotte pushes for Army infrastructure investments at N.H. research lab

Aging infrastructure at Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory (CRREL) in Hanover, New Hampshire, is in dire need of an upgrade, and U.S. Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-NH) is pressing the Army to make the investment.

As a component of the Army Corps of Engineers, CRREL provides critical environmental research that assists the Department of Defense.

Ayotte, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, requested $1.5 million in investments at CRREL in an August letter to Katherine Hammack, Army assistant secretary of Installations, Energy and Environment.

The senator wrote that fulfillment of CRREL’s mission is being hampered by outdated key infrastructure, including transformers that are more than 50 years old.

Hammack responded in September that the CRREL transformer yard project was a “number one priority for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.” She added that the program would be finalized within the next few months.

Ayotte recently requested a status update. The senator reiterated the importance of the investment and the need to fund the project as part of the Army’s fiscal year 2017 Unspecified Minor Military Construction program.

“The current transformers in the transformer yard are over 50 years old, require constant maintenance and present a serious safety hazard,” Ayotte wrote. “A modern transformer yard, built to today’s standards, will improve energy efficiency and provide a safer working environment for the scientists, engineers and staff.”

CRREL’s work is important because it provides environmentally controlled research at low temperatures. For example, the laboratory helped solve the Army’s problem of rapidly repairing roadways in cold weather in harsh foreign environments. CRREL developed a cold-weather concrete that the Army can use in Afghanistan as a solution.